Slackware 14.1 + Xfce: apps for burning and viewing PDF files
 

Hi,

I'm currently busy preparing my customized MLED and MLWS repositories for Slackware 14.1.

• http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/MLED-14.1-32bit/
• http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/MLWS-14.1-32bit/

The Xfce-based MLED 14.0 has Evince 3.4.0 as PDF viewer, and Brasero 3.4.1 as burning app. Both are nicely integrated into Xfce and work very well.

Now I'm starting to face a wall with 14.1. Brasero 3.4.1 refuses to build, and more recent versions suffer from the GNOME sickness: they have an unsatisfiable hunger for even more GNOME dependencies and tend to draw the whole GNOME kitchen sink in.

I gave up on Brasero and went for Xfburn instead. Nicely integrated, only one drawback: it can't handle M3U (or any) playlists, so if you burn audio, you have to manually select every audio file. I wrote a mail to the Xfburn developer, but never got a response.

Right now I don't even want to give Evince a spin. On the other hand, Acroread is not really an option. So what does that leave me with?

I understand there are quite many Xfce users here, so I thought I'd ask for your suggestions in that matter.

Cheers,

Niki

xfce.org recomends http://www.mupdf.com/. Have you tried it?

As PDF viewer, okular? (just kidding :-)
More seriously, xpdf has a small footprint and works well here.

On my machine I need both xpdf and Okular. Seems some pdf files won't display on one or the other. My pdf viewing needs are simple. 99.99% of the pdf's come from www.bitsavers.org, which is a collection of old computer manuals. Supposedly, they are really TIFF images with a small pdf wrapper around them so I haven't a clue why sometimes I need a different pdf viewer for one of them.

Coordially

Me Too
 

I also use both xpdf and Okular for the same reason. The xfce default Okular works most of the time but when it doesn't I use xpdf to display/print the PDF file. My needs are basic so I generally use what comes with the Slackware release. I do need to fill in fields on a PDF form occasionally.

Is this a good combination? ... or does it mean that Okular is inadequate and should be replaced with something else? (I suppose Didier already gave us one answer.)

I use Zathura (due to its Vim-like behavior), but with MuPDF as backend, because MuPDF renders significantly faster. I never came across a PDF that I couldn't display, but of course YMMV. From my experience I can recommend MuPDF.

Some observations on my experience with different pdf viewers.
xpdf is quick to load, but struggles with pdf files that contain non-embedded fonts, requiring installing required fonts (can be a hassle with pdf files prepared on Windows sytems). You can select text and copy it to the clipboard to paste into another application, but you cannot copy and paste graphics.
okular allows you to copy and paste graphics in addition to text.
If you need to deal with manuscript proofing prepared in Adobe Acrobat, then you need Acroread, as it uses proprietary extensions.

I should have been more assertive. I think okular (that I use on the occasion too, though under Fluxbox) is adequate for some users, e.g. under KDE. But if I understand well Nicolas plans to provide only one pdf reader to be used in conjunction with XFCE. If that's the case xpdf would be a better choice IMO.

when It comes to burning cd in an xfce environment, I usually install Simpleburn from Frank Endres at http://simpleburn.tuxfamily.org

I tend to install epdfview to read PDF, but I also keep an eye on qpdfview at https://launchpad.net/qpdfview .

This looks interesting. Does it support audio playlists like M3U ?

I have no idea honestly!

I have rather basic needs for cd burning.

Just give the software a go, It might fullfill your needs otherwise you may also request features to the author (Mister Endres is a French man teaching computer sciences with Slackware products).

I switched from zathura to ePDFView, it's a nice and easy GTK viewer. (XFCE user.)

A 14.0 slackbuild is available :
"The aim of ePDFView is to make a simple PDF document viewer, in the lines of Evince but without using the Gnome libraries."

what's wrong with 'cdrecord/wodim'? (never use anything else ... - oh that's right, it's not point-n-click - but then, this is slackware!!)

It appears that m3u support is relegated to Brasero and K3b. Xfburn doesn't support it, Simple Burn doesn't support it (I checked the source), cdw doesn't support it, etc. It's a shame, but it also seems to be how it is.

For PDFs, I wouldn't suggest ePDFView for the simple fact that it is dead. Zathura is good, but has a decidedly technical interface. MuPDF is what I use, but it barely has an interface, somewhat like mplayer. Atril seems promising, (it's a fork of Evince,) but it requires MATE. Xpdf still chugs along and is quite usable, if not a little aged. gv (GhostView) is quite similar, though is probably more usable for publishing, rather than typical document viewing. *gasp*

So I would suggest seeing if Evince will still build, and either shoehorning Brasero in or forfeiting m3u support.

(Or making users face cdrtools, but that's probably less recommended.)

First of all, thanks you everybody for all your suggestions and comments. I'll fiddle around with all that stuff this weekend. As far as I'm concerned, I have no trouble using command-line apps. But this configuration is for my users, among which there are some not very computer-literate folks.