Question about SmartPDF

Here you can discuss ReactOS related topics.

Moderator: Moderator Team

Post Reply
keytotime
Posts: 51
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:11 am

Question about SmartPDF

Post by keytotime »

I have a quick question about SmartPDF, will it be just sumatrapdf or will it be a fork of sumatrapdf?
Cristan
Posts: 170
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:41 am
Location: The Netherlands

Post by Cristan »

I know this topic is called General Discussion. But at least a little relevance with ReactOS would be nice.
Z98
Release Engineer
Posts: 3379
Joined: Tue May 02, 2006 8:16 pm
Contact:

Post by Z98 »

We imported sumatrapdf into our repository. That's likely why he's asking.
Cristan
Posts: 170
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:41 am
Location: The Netherlands

Post by Cristan »

Z98 wrote:We imported sumatrapdf into our repository. That's likely why he's asking.
Ah, I didn't know that. Does ReactOS has a built in PDF reader, or is it used for another reason?
Haos
Test Team
Posts: 2954
Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 5:42 am
Contact:

Post by Haos »

It should be made working under ROS first. Last time i tried, SumatraPDF failed miserably under ROS 0.3.3 rc2
InFeRnODeMoN
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Jul 04, 2006 1:39 pm

Post by InFeRnODeMoN »

Haos wrote:It should be made working under ROS first. Last time i tried, SumatraPDF failed miserably under ROS 0.3.3 rc2
I think that it's more appropriate to make ROS run it, not hack it to make it run on ROS.
cmoibenlepro
Posts: 483
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:44 pm
Location: Canada

Post by cmoibenlepro »

I think that it's more appropriate to make ROS run it, not hack it to make it run on ROS.
Here is the reason why it's added to rosapps.
Klemens Friedl wrote:The idea was to have some lightweight apps similar to the vision of
Win95. All recent operating system have a PDF viewer as it's (beside
DOC) the number one document format. My plan was to remove one of the
pdf engines and add office format support (ole2, using libgsf
library), so we would have a very lightweight document viewer app. An
shell extention could then add preview & metadata of documents to
explorer/shell.

I have also plans for a indexing service that provides system wide
search and an interface to be compatible with MS iFilter, WordBreaker,
etc.
The current plan for such an indexing service is to use SQLite3 and
CLucene. SQLite3 is a public domain very lightweight SQL engine that
is used in a lot of software (I bet it is already in use on all of
your computers and your cellphones, mp3 players, etc.). CLucene is a
C++ port of the famous Java fulltext search engine. SQLite3 got a
fulltext engine plugin itself, thanks to a google dev, called "FTS".
It's currently limited but looks promising too.
Of course, MS neither use SQLite nor CLucene for their indexer, but
use their own database engine, based on SQL products that they have
bought a long time ago.
Writing a new database with fulltext support from scratch is not
feasonable, and giving the fact that all recent software switched to
SQLite (several new Microsoft software and games, google gears, new
GMail, Google Reader, Google Desktop, Adobe Lightroom, several Apple
software (coredata OS core lib, Spotlight search engine, iPhoto,
etc.), I think it's ok to choose it.

An iFilter dll would use the pdf engine to extract the text and the metadata.
I have planned to add some lightweight Win32 apps (E-Mail client, IRC
client, PDF/Office-format viewer).
As a PDF iFilter would be a needed anyway (at least in my opinion), so
poppler is required too, and then a lightweight PDF viewer is just a
matter of a few more source files. (currently, it consists of two pdf
engines, one needs to be removed, one is optional anyway).

The overall goal is that is to have a handful of basic apps similar to
Win95 (paint, email, etc.) and a system wide search that indexes
several important formats (plugin based, with iFilter interface to be
compatible with MS search products).


If a pdf vieweror a document viewer in general don't fit in "rosapps",
then move it somewhere else, delete it or revert the commit(s).

If someone thinks that a indexer is not needed, and Google Desktop or
any other third party desktop search engine is enough. Then you have
probably never used a so called "desktop search". Please try out one,
and you will see none of them even comes close to Apple Spotlight on
MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger), and remember even Spotlight isn't that great
(search results, boolean search), Google WebSearch is still a lot
faster and delivers better search results.
I am planning on the indexer for abouzt 1 1/2 years and the current
status is that almost all third party libs compile with the reactos
build environment in my local tree. Additionally, several test apps
already work fine. One major issue is how to write the IDL for the
iFilter interface. Another one is how to parse the search-input and
send it to the right search engine and combine the results
efficiently. But that's something for another ML-thread.
Haos
Test Team
Posts: 2954
Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 5:42 am
Contact:

Post by Haos »

InFeRnODeMoN wrote:I think that it's more appropriate to make ROS run it, not hack it to make it run on ROS.
You are absolutely right, it was just a kind of "inside" shortcut, that shouldn`t be used.

To make something work under ROS = to fix ROS, so the afforementioned app would work.

EDIT:
I support this addition wholeheartedly, despite using other application for viewing pdf docs (Foxit Reader). Although nice and small, Foxit is closed-source, freeware, but sort of an advert of this company other PDF apps, like PDF editor. Foxit is also using less memory than Sumatra, although the latter goes easier on threads, USER and GDI objects. Foxit beats everything on the market with its supreme rendering speed, but Sumatra is still WAY faster than Acrobat Reader.

Finally, being open source makes Sumatra ideal for our attempts of PDF engine integration. For me, pdf reader is one of the must have app, that is to be installed on every new system i`m doing. Any attempt of direct integration (for the user to be chosen of course) would win my eternal gratitude.
keytotime
Posts: 51
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:11 am

Post by keytotime »

Thank You for the information. It sounds like Okular for Windows, which is really great.
oiaohm
Posts: 1322
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:40 am

Post by oiaohm »

http://okular.kde.org/ Kinda goes way past a pdf reader. The kde pdf reader is kpdf. When the get complete porting kde to windows we will have them too. Most likely heavy.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 49 guests