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Comment by nodivbyzero | Hacker News Reader

Why do I need to install free, cross-platform, open-source program if I can render pdf in my browser?

You don't need to install one, it comes pre-installed on Windows, Mac and nearly all Linux distros. (The first two aren't open-source though).

Maybe I missed some recent news, but what PDF viewer is pre-installed on Windows?

There was one in Windows 8 (Windows Reader) but it was removed in Windows 10. It is still available for free in the Windows Store.

Did they? Edge definitely still opens PDFs by default on Windows 10.

Did you upgrade from Windows 8 or install new? New installs of Windows 10 or upgrades from 7 won't have it installed.

I'm talking about Reader btw, which would be analogous to macOS's Preview. Edge is like Firefox with PDF.js.

Reader works better than PDF.js too.

In Windows 10, Reader was officially merged into Edge. The app that remains in the Windows Store will gently encourage you to use Edge instead. This seems part of the direction shift from simple task-focused apps (back) towards branded monolithic apps as Microsoft tries to find a healthy middle ground between good for mobile and convenient for old desktop users. (It's been a bigger deal of public concern with the Messaging/Phone/Skype apps back and forth shifts, but that hasn't been the only place this has been happening, as seen here with Reader, Reading List, and Edge.)

Yeah I was thinking of the one included in Windows 8, didn't know that they dropped it.

I remember that one. Before 8.1, it could not print PDFs. I have been struggling ever since to come up with an appropriate metaphor for how idiotic a PDF viewer without printing is.

Windows 8 tried to move all of printing into the Charms bar, which was a great idea in that something so common (so many apps need to print) would have one big place to nearly always find it, but of course was also a bad idea because learning the Charms required unlearning the idea that every app has its own Print button scattered somewhere possibly randomly in the app itself and learning the Charms instead.

So you could definitely print PDFs in Windows 8 from the Devices Charm. You'd just need to know that was what the Devices Charm was for.

(I thought the Charms were a good idea that Microsoft didn't quite know how to execute.)

Thanks for the explanation!

Having a single place for printing rather than one per application sounds like a nice idea indeed. If only they had documented it better... ;-)

In Windows 10, Microsoft Edge is used to view PDFs.

Which is another reason Mozilla needs to have a PDF viewer - it's a feature web browsers are simply expected to have these days.

OTOH, pdf.js is the first thing I disable in Firefox, since SumatraPDF and Atril render things much more quickly and lightly! :)

I can understand customer demand but I'd prefer if it was optional - e.g. the first time a user visits a PDF they're prompted to install a viewer if they so wish.

AFAIK Edge is the default PDF viewer in Windows 10.

Nearly all Linux distros? Other than the Ubuntu family and Fedora, which distros even come with one?

If you're techy enough to use a distro apart from Ubuntu you probably know how to install a PDF viewer in a few seconds.

True, but since Windows (up until 7, and then on 10 as well) doesn't come with a PDF viewer by default, the only popular platform that guarantees a PDF viewer is OS X, which only makes up a small portion of Firefox users (7 percent as of 2009 [1], can't find newer statistics though), especially since Firefox is quite popular for GNU/Linux users.

And anyways, it all comes down to convenience. I know of many people who would much prefer viewing a PDF in their browser than having to switch between applications even though they're "techy enough" to install one. If people are happy with the PDF.js or some other in-browser PDF viewer, why make them switch?

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/only-7-percent-of-active-firefox-b...

For example: openSUSE, Manjaro, CentOS and Arch. If you install a DE like GNOME (evince), MATE (atril) or KDE (okular).

I can assure you that Arch Linux and Manjaro do not come with a PDF viewer. Considering openSUSE is distribute with other desktop environments than those you listed, it doesn't seem to come with a PDF viewer by default (although it's possible that I missed some package that adds it anyways). Please don't spread misinformation without first researching the topic.

Just tried Manjaro in a VM: Comes with qpdfview.

Of course you might get openSUSE in a flavor without a PDF viewer, but you could say the same thing about Ubuntu: Just get the Server edition. So when we're talking about "by default" I also consider the "default" flavor of those distributions.

Lots of desktop environments come with either Evince or Okular.

Because it slooooowwww.

Never experienced that. Are you using an older machine?

No, relatively recent and configured for software development, including heavy IDE usage.

Even on my beefy work laptop, a W510, it manages to be slow.

Pages don't get rendered properly, sometimes it hangs between pages and the whole Firefox interface doesn't render and so on.

Hence why I always re-configure Firefox to save PDFs instead of using PDF.js.

OK, our experiences differ it seems. Maybe your docs are bigger or harder to render or something.

I mostly open < 50page docs, typically api specs etc. I guess they are converted from Word although hard to say.

Computers specs are 1 y.o. laptop, ssd, dual core intel with 16 GB memory and ssd.

I have expeeienced broken docs once or twice but nothing that really bothered me.

For me the convenience of normal Firefox search etc working is worth firing up an external pdf reader for once or twice a year.

I wonder if I haven't seens ome kind of web form or something where you could submit hard-to-render docs but this of course doesn't help if the docs are NDAed or something.

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