PDF reader that only consumes 3MB

One day, tired of my PDF reader loading the memory from 12 to 25 mb, I decided to look for one that was pleasant to look at and that had the minimum functionalities, such as going from the first page to 30 in one go, search for a specific text within it, among others.

I tried among several readers such as:

• epdfviw
• xpdf
• thathura
• apvlv

But none of them passed the tests, the memory consumption of these was not to my liking, so I came across MUPDF, which passed the tests consuming only approximately 3MB of RAM.

After several tests, I noticed that some pdfs with open passwords could not be opened by opening them only with mupdf. Reading the manual of this program I found an option in which the opening password is added with the option -p password, so create a simple script to open them.

#!/bin/bash

mupdf "$1" || mupdf -p "`zenity --entry --hide-text --text "Teclee el Pasword de Apertura" --title "MUPDF (Lector de PDF)" --window-icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/mupdf.png`"

The objective is that if the opening of a pdf file fails, it will ask us for the password to open them. If you want more precision regarding the passwords, you can check if it is actually encrypted with this command: (It is necessary to install mupdf-tools)

#!/bin/bash

mupdf "$1" & pdfshow "$1" | grep "Encrypt" && mupdf -p "`zenity --entry --hide-text --text "Teclee el Pasword de Apertura" --title "MUPDF (Lector de PDF)" --window-icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/mupdf.png`" "$1"

Keypad Operation

To search, go to a certain page is done using the keyboard, let's see:

/ : To search for a text, the word Search will appear at the top: there we type the word to search. You can use the key n o N to go to the next search result.

Keyboard arrows : Right go to the next page, Left go to the previous page, up and down to go up or down the page.

+ y - : Zoom in or out of PDF

You can use the m key to mark the bookmark page and then with the keyboard pressing the combination of numbers corresponding to the page and press enter (ex: 4) and we can go back to the bookmark page with the t key.

To print the PDF you can use the following command.

lp -d nombre-impresora -n número-de-copias(1) -o media=letter -o sides=two-sided-long-edge fichero.pdf

They just have to make sure that the printer is configured for the same type of paper as the one that is sent to print., I do not print anything in particular because almost everything I read on the screen, but I did not want to leave this important in the air function.

Now, to copy the text you can, convert the pdf into txt with pdftotext or use a clipboard monitor program and copy the text of the first selection (parcellite does it), configured these will only have to select the text to be copied by pressing the right mouse button and select the area, copy even the copy-protected PDF , a curious fact do not believe.