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The minimalist approach to PDFs

Posted 24 August 2007 at 8:42AM by Simon Dickson in IT systems and support

Adobe's Acrobat Reader is undeniably good at what it does: providing a foolproof means of communicating a document from one place to another, ensuring it appears exactly as you intend it. The extra functionality added through the years - the ability to create interactive forms, or clickable documents - is quite impressive too, although little used in practice.

But there's a catch. In expanding its horizons, Adobe's Acrobat Reader program has become a bloated 22MB download, not to mention a bit of a memory hog. So it's refreshing to know that Adobe's reader is not the only PDF program out there. FoxIt Reader is tiny by comparison, just 1.7MB; it's quick to fire up, and has a well-established reputation as a sound alternative. The free version has all the standard document-reading and printing functionality you'll need. But there's now a new kid on the block: Sumatra describes itself as 'minimalist', which presumably explains how it squeezes into a 0.8MB download. It's slightly faster, and unlike FoxIt's product, it's 'open source' - if that sort of thing matters to you.

FoxIt and Sumatra both have one significant advantage over the Adobe product: they don't need to be 'installed'. So if you're ever desperate for a PDF reader, and you find yourself using a 'locked down' PC, you can download either of these, and run the necessary .exe file without having to access the protected areas of the PC's hard disk. Even better, you can run them directly from a USB memory stick. It's a great way to take presentations out on the road, as backup for (or instead of) typically huge PowerPoint files.

The two upstarts definitely have their merits. Both are much, much quicker than the official Adobe Reader. The FoxIt product even includes the ability to print multiple pages per sheet of A4: something I wish more programs offered - but I've had a few problems with copying text out of PDF documents. Sumatra lacks the multi-page printing, but then again, it deliberately lacks more or less everything beyond simple document display... and that's probably a good thing.

I find myself warming to Sumatra's stripped-bare approach, and I'll certainly be keeping it handy for emergency uses. But without the multi-page printing, I'm afraid it won't be deposing Adobe's Reader as my default PDF program just yet.

Tags: acrobat, adobe, foxit, pdf, sumatra

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