# PDF: Quality of Document Rendering on BSDs



## vermaden (Feb 10, 2011)

A simple comparision of Evince (epdfview does the same) and Sumatra PDF using WINE (Sumatra PDF is open-source software, but written for Windows platform).

*Evince vs. Sumatra | RENDERING*




*Evince vs. Sumatra | MEMORY USAGE*






What is more funny, its more memory efficient to use Sumatra PDF using WINE then Evince natively ... guess whats my new PDF viewer 

[1] http://projects.gnome.org/evince/
[2] http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html

*PS. *If You are scared about lack of WINE on amd64, then I have good message for You, these screenshots are from FreeBSD 8.2 amd64 using package by *Ivoras *available here: http://people.freebsd.org/~ivoras/wine/


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## xibo (Feb 10, 2011)

This is hardly representative. How much memory does wineserver ( or whatever it's called ) consume? Furthermore evince isn't exactly a program famous for being resource-friendly. Visual Studio will use less memory then kdevelop, too. But like evince, kdevelop has more useful features for us (well, some of us) therefore it's worth the price.



> PS. If You are scared about lack of WINE on amd64, then I have good message for You, these screenshots are from FreeBSD 8.2 amd64 using package by Ivoras available here: http://people.freebsd.org/~ivoras/wine/


This is useful.


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## dandelion (Feb 10, 2011)

Looks OK here. I guess you have antialiasing turned off somewhere, e.g. poppler, cairo.


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## wblock@ (Feb 10, 2011)

The FreeBSD version looks like antialiasing is disabled or not as good.  A free document that could be used as a test case would be good.


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## aragon (Feb 10, 2011)

vermaden said:
			
		

> What is more funny, its more memory efficient to use Sumatra PDF using WINE then Evince natively


Is it fair to compare a 32 bit app's memory usage with that of a 64 bit app's?  Let's see memory usage for a 32 bit Evince linked against 32 bit libraries...



			
				wblock said:
			
		

> A free document that could be used as a test case would be good.


Yes.


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## vermaden (Feb 11, 2011)

wblock said:
			
		

> A free document that could be used as a test case would be good.


Take any PDF document You like with raster graphics (an embedded JPEG for example).



			
				dandelion said:
			
		

> Looks OK here. I guess you have antialiasing turned off somewhere, e.g. poppler, cairo.


I currently have FreeBSD 8.2-RC3 but with packages still from 8.1-RELEASE (the FTP dir .../amd64/packages-8.2-release/... is still not accessible) so maybe that is the problem, which version You are using, You use Evince there?

On *daemonforums* I got suggestion to use http://mupdf.com/ which uses Sumatra PDF libraries (these are ported to Linux/UNIX).


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## dandelion (Feb 11, 2011)

vermaden said:
			
		

> Take any PDF document You like with raster graphics (an embedded JPEG for example).


Try
	
	



```
Index: graphics/evince/Makefile
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/ncvs/ports/graphics/evince/Makefile,v
retrieving revision 1.63
diff -u -p -r1.63 Makefile
--- graphics/evince/Makefile	4 Dec 2010 07:31:56 -0000	1.63
+++ graphics/evince/Makefile	11 Feb 2011 18:44:02 -0000
@@ -128,6 +128,8 @@ post-patch:
 	@${REINPLACE_CMD} -e '/^DOC_MODULE_VERSION/d' \
 		${WRKSRC}/help/reference/libdocument/Makefile.in \
 		${WRKSRC}/help/reference/libview/Makefile.in
+	@${REINPLACE_CMD} 's/CAIRO_FILTER_FAST/CAIRO_FILTER_BEST/' \
+		${WRKSRC}/libview/ev-view.c
 
 post-install:
 	@-update-desktop-database
```



			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> which version You are using, You use Evince there?


/head + poppler-0.14.5 + cairo-0.11.2 + graphics/zathura. zathura (C) is ligthweight pdf-viewer compared to evince (bloatware), epdfview (C++), apvlv (C++). Because they all use poppler pdf-rendering should be similar.


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## wblock@ (Feb 11, 2011)

vermaden said:
			
		

> Take any PDF document You like with raster graphics (an embedded JPEG for example).



Those should be PostScript splines; I wouldn't expect antialiasing of raster graphics.  Using a certain PDF as a benchmark would allow comparison between systems.


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