• From: U.S.A.
  • Registered: 2009-01-28
  • Posts: 531

Topic: Large PDF's (300+ pages) look terrible with Evince

Solution: Okular which is available via Synaptic (Package Manager).

I'm reading a PDF of an Organic Chemistry textbook, and I noticed that the quality of the text rendering is horrible with Evince (see screen). In comparison, there is a night and day difference with Okular (see screen). I'm not sure why Evince doesn't seem to be able to handle larger PDFs with the same quality that it displays smaller pdf files, but IMO Okular, the successor to KPDF is a nice alternative.

How you all noticed this limitation with Evince? The screens don't show the dramatic difference as much as I would like, but what I'm seeing on my screen is significant.

#! 10 “Statler” r20110207 32-bit & Openbox
  • From: Brisbane, Aus
  • Registered: 2009-08-14
  • Posts: 13

Re: Large PDF's (300+ pages) look terrible with Evince

I have found that 'some' large pdf's are rendered poorly with evince, but not all. Any LaTeX documents (some 40+ pages) that I produce with pdflatex are fine. However, the past exam papers from my uni are rendered very badly.

I find that if I zoom right in and then back out again it increases the resolution of the image.

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  • pvsage
  • Internal Affairs
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  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
  • Posts: 4,912

Re: Large PDF's (300+ pages) look terrible with Evince

Looks to me like they're just handling a raster image differently, with Okular employing more antialiasing.

@Keplerspeed: I'm assuming your pdflatex-generated PDF's are vector image files rather than raster?

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  • jvd
  • #! CrunchBanger
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  • Registered: 2010-01-29
  • Posts: 191

Re: Large PDF's (300+ pages) look terrible with Evince

iḿ just working from a textbook pdf, but i've split up the chapters and exercises in seperate pdfs. it makes the fast looking up of portions of text easier. CLI tool pdftk was very handy...

  • From: U.S.A.
  • Registered: 2009-01-28
  • Posts: 531

Re: Large PDF's (300+ pages) look terrible with Evince

jvd wrote:

iḿ just working from a textbook pdf, but i've split up the chapters and exercises in seperate pdfs. it makes the fast looking up of portions of text easier. CLI tool pdftk was very handy...

thanks for the tip.

#! 10 “Statler” r20110207 32-bit & Openbox