What is Sumatra PDF?

Sumatra PDF is a free PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) reader for Windows.Sumatra PDF is powerful, small, portable and starts up very fast.Simplicity of the user interface has a high priority.

Development

Sumatra PDF is written mainly by two contributors: Krzysztof Kowalczyk and Simon Bünzli.The source code is developed in two programming languages, mostly in C++, with some components in C. The source code is provided with support for Microsoft Visual Studio.

As it was first designed when Windows XP was the current version of Windows, Sumatra initially had some incompatibilities with earlier versions of Windows. Support for Windows 95, 98 and ME has since been removed.

Initially, Kowalczyk did not release a 64-bit version of Sumatra, indicating that while it might offer slightly more speed and available memory, he believed at that time that it would greatly add to user confusion and that the benefits would not outweigh the potential costs.However, some users requested 64-bit builds of Sumatra and other developers had compiled unofficial 64-bit builds which loaded documents faster than the 32-bit builds. However, the official builds' developer had requested that unofficial builds not bear the 'Sumatra' name.In October 2015, an official 64-bit version of Sumatra was released.

The Sumatra source code was originally hosted on Google Code. Due to US export legal restrictions, it was unavailable "in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.The source code is currently hosted on GitHub.

Name and artwork

The author has indicated that the choice of the name "Sumatra" is not a tribute to the Sumatra island or coffee, stating that there is no particular reasoning behind the name.

The graphics design of Sumatra is a tribute to the cover of the Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Critical reception

Sumatra has attracted acclaim for its speed and simplicity,for being portable,its keyboard shortcuts, and its open-source development.

At one time the Free Software Foundation Europe recommended Sumatra PDF, but then removed its recommendation in February 2014, due to the presence of the non-freely licensed unrar code in Sumatra. Foundation representative Heiki Ojasild explained, "while they continue to make use of the non-free library, SumatraPDF cannot be recognised as Free Software".Unrar was eventually replaced with a free alternative in version 3.0, making it 100% free software.

Specifications

Industry :

General