Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

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Omega X
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Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by Omega X »

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/how-fast-is-pdf-js/

A Mozilla experiment finally pays off. Oprah developers took notice after searching for PDF viewer options and they found out it was faster than expected.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Maybe if we are lucky they will bother to fix the broken fonts implementation and back-port it.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by Frank Lion »

Omega X wrote:Oprah developers took notice after searching for PDF viewer options and they found out it was faster than expected.

It is certainly is.

No other pdf application of the entire Internet can flash up the ''this PDF document might not be displayed correctly' faster than Mozilla's pdf.js.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by mightyglydd »

Total P of C. Has it improved, or are they too busy packaging Phones for their pals?
Last edited by mightyglydd on May 8th, 2014, 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by LoudNoise »

^^ That said, most of the time the warning seems to be more a lack of confidence then a real problem. The only PDFs I have problems with are those from the more lazy districts of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by mightyglydd »

On Windows have you ever compared it to Sumatra (4.06 MB) ? No even close.
..but I'm giving the Fx one a new go on Linux.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by LoudNoise »

Never used Sumatra. That said, getting worked up about the differences between particular PDF clients never occurred me. The test, for me, is if it is hard to read.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by mightyglydd »

..which last time I tried, the majority were, seem to recall a number of threads on the subject.... a Greasy Spoon restaurant Menu?
Edit : Hmm, just rendered a 30 page HP monitor User Guide perfectly..... however, compared to Evince (almost instantaneous) it's a slow loading slug.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by LoudNoise »

I am not sure what you mean. What majority?
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by mightyglydd »

ma·jor·i·ty
Majority.

: a number that is greater than half of a total

: a number of votes that is more than half of the total number

: the group or party that is the greater part of a large group

Over a few days; I open a LOT of PDF's.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by LoudNoise »

err, I didn't say what's majority. If the majority of the PDFs you read are not readable all I can say is that isn't the case with me. Then again, I only deal with them on gov sites that also have a number of other regional institutional problems.
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Omega X
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by Omega X »

Frank Lion wrote:
Omega X wrote:Oprah developers took notice after searching for PDF viewer options and they found out it was faster than expected.

It is certainly is.

No other pdf application of the entire Internet can flash up the ''this PDF document might not be displayed correctly' faster than Mozilla's pdf.js.


The article did mention that it didn't have robust error handling.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by Gingerbread Man »

Cool, I guess. Now the add-on isn't needed. Chrome has built-in support for PDF, but that part isn't open-source, so they had to do something to get closer to Chrome's feature set. Still no H.264 support :|

It'd be nice if they'd re-implement animated PNG support while they were at it, though there's an add-on for that too.
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by patrickjdempsey »

LoudNoise wrote:^^ That said, most of the time the warning seems to be more a lack of confidence then a real problem. The only PDFs I have problems with are those from the more lazy districts of the National Marine Fisheries Service.


On my machines when the error appears I typically see no text. Not just the usual garbled fonts... but no text. I filed a bug about it and there was some interest in it until they realized I have HWA disabled. Apparently they don't consider HWA-disabled support important or something. It's relatively rare that this happens... but not only it is not excusable, but if the program KNOWS it's going to have a problem rendering fonts, why doesn't it have a fall-back method for rendering them like HTML does? Or indeed, why isn't there an option to always render PDF's with the default fonts?
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Re: Oprah decides to use PDF.js, impressed with its speed

Post by SnoutSpout »

LoudNoise wrote:Never used Sumatra. That said, getting worked up about the differences between particular PDF clients never occurred me. The test, for me, is if it is hard to read.

Sumatra is ridiculously fast if we're speaking rendering performance (which translates to scrolling speed.) But it would be, since it swaps memory for performance instead, which is abundantly clear if you look at the memory requirements for multi-hundred page textual PDFs with no graphical content.
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