LINUXUSER Evince

The Evince document viewer VERSATILE VIEWER www.sxc.hu

Evince is quickly becoming Gnome’s standard viewer for PDF and other document formats. BY MATTHIAS WARKUS Evince tries to meet usability require- ments by performing its tasks conve- niently and efficiently, rather than by ike other visions of the future, the viewer for these file types. Evince can confusing the user with an overdose of paperless office is taking much also handle graphic formats such as TIFF options. In the program window, there is Llonger than anyone expected. The and DjVu, which are typically the result a toolbox below the menu with buttons heaps of paper on office desks just don’t of scanning text documents. that allow users to scroll through the file seem to get any smaller. On a brighter or zoom the display. The document fills note, some books – especially technical The Program most of the program window. A column documentation – are now available in If you are using Evince as a viewer, it is on the left margin of the screen gives electronic format, alternatively or exclu- more common to launch the program in you a thumbnail-based overview of the sively, as the case may be. Documents the context of the file you need to view, pages in the document (Figure 2). in the Portable Document Format (PDF) so you are likely to launch Evince by If necessary, the sidebar can display [2], an Adobe [1] development, look the clicking in a file manager, rather than by the document structure as an expand- same no matter what operating system entering evince, followed by the file- able tree. Both options assume that the you use, and this means extending genu- name, at the command line. document actually contains this infor- ine cross-platform compatibility to docu- mation. ment design. You can disable In the world of Unix and Linux, other the overview to formats such as PostScript and DVI play have more space important roles. There are any number for the main win- of Linux-based document viewers. dow. Disabling the Gnome now includes Evince (Figure 1) overview is partic- [3], a useful all-rounder, as the standard ularly useful if you are displaying After serving as a translator with the a double-page Gnome Project, Matthias Warkus spread. Additio- found a niche for himself in public nally, full-screen relations. The editor of the official mode gives you Gnome 2 developer manual started a full set of con- studying philosophy two years ago. trols, with the ex- THEAUTHOR Figure 1: The Evince GUI gives users the bare necessities. ception of scroll

86 ISSUE 61 DECEMBER 2005 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM Evince LINUXUSER

Figure 2: Evince displaying thumbnails for the document pages.. Figure 4: Evince supports PDF features such as password protection. boxes. Navigational aids are hidden mode) without any trouble. Evince does this kind of feature is referred to – is part completely in presentation mode, where not give you a print preview, as the of the Gnome guidelines. the pages appear on a black background print-out should be exactly what a pixel and only keyboard controls remain. perfect viewer shows on screen. Conclusion Evince recently introduced the ability to Finally, Gnome has a useful document display simple presentations in Power- Tools viewer that integrates seamlessly with Point format. Although most PDF files are typically the desktop. Evince is the designated No matter which mode you are work- text-oriented, the pixel-based display successor of Ggv (Gnome Ghostview) for ing in, Evince scrolls and zooms even makes it difficult to search for words or PostScript, Gpdf for PDF-formated files, graphically oriented documents quickly. strings. Despite this, Evince has a search and Eog (Eye of Gnome) for images. The display quality can easily hold sway function comparable to the function in Evince has a number of advantages in with Adobe’s proprietary Adobe Reader Adobe Reader. The Search dialog does comparison to Adobe Reader: it launches tool. Evince uses the standard Gnome not pop up a window but displays a box far more quickly and is more intuitive. printing interface for hard copies, and at the bottom of the screen, in a similar At the same time, Evince needs just five this means that you can use printer set- fashion to the Firefox Browser (Figure Mbytes of memory – compare this with tings and functions (such as duplex 3). This variant is in line with the the massive 100 MByte footprint for the Gnome usability Adobe Reader. The programs are about guidelines, which on par when it comes to displaying doc- all Gnome appli- uments, however, if you need special- cations will be ex- ized PDF functions, such as editable pected to adhere forms or annotations, you have no alter- to in the future. native but to go for the more compli- The toolbox is cated Adobe Reader. another fine ex- There is some debate as to the role ample of user that Evince will play in the future. Some friendliness. The developers would like to see Evince dis- toolbox editor dis- play MS Word and OpenOffice Writer plays all the icons files, thus eliminating the need for the that you can add user to launch a large office suite just to to the toolbox a view a single document. ■ using drag & drop. To discard a but- INFO ton, just drag it [1] Adobe: http:// www. adobe. com out of the toolbox [2] PDF: http:// en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ PDF with your mouse. Figure 3: Like Firefox, Evince has an integrated search box at the Again, direct ma- [3] Evince: http:// www. gnome. org/ projects/ evince/ bottom of the screen. nipulation – as

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