Evince was replaced by Papers as the default Document Viewer app for the upcoming GNOME 49

[-]

AkiNoHotoke@reddit

I switched to zathura long ago. Genuine question:

Is there anything that Evince/Papers does that zathura cannot?

[-]

Misicks0349@reddit

its a gtk app, they're both just pdf readers.

[-]

It is quite obvious that they are both gtk pdf readers, that is not what my question was about. My question is in terms of feature differences, advantages and disadvantages. Evince being mouse friendly is one feature that zathura does not have, as already pointed out.

[-]

itsbakuretsutime@reddit

Evince is easy select and copy the text from, can do highlight, doesn't have only keyboard driven interface which is a pain for rarely used features when hamburger or context menu will do, and is generally more convenient to use unless you write LaTeX (idk if it has file auto update).

[-]

AkiNoHotoke@reddit

I agree. I just find the Evince header too chonky, but indeed it is more user-friendly and for the features that others have highlighted here, I will give it a second try.

[-]

Misicks0349@reddit

im not sure if theres anything particularity standout, its just supposed to fit in with the gnome desktop as a whole.

[-]

yourealwaysbe@reddit

I switch to Evince when I need to read/add annotations. Afaik they are not supported in Zathura.

[-]

AkiNoHotoke@reddit

This is a good reason to use Evince. Thank you for pointing it out.

[-]

Helmic@reddit

zathura does not do annotations nor does it seem to have hte ability to fill in PDF forms. it's actually got quite a few limitations relative to something like adobe reader, most of its "advanced" functionality is more about efficiently navigating a PDF with a keyboard rather than interacting with the document.

someone else mentioned sioyek which seems zathura-like in that it's keyboard-driven but with more features. i'm going to check it out as i'd really like to have a keyboard-centric way to take notes for an upcoming pathfinder 2e game i'm game mastering.

[-]

AkiNoHotoke@reddit

I see, this was very insightful. Thank you very much!

[-]

poudink@reddit

No, and that's by design. Completely different design philosophies.

[-]

letmewriteyouup@reddit

The obvious one would be that it has an unambiguous UI for mouse users to interact with.

[-]

AkiNoHotoke@reddit

Indeed, you are right about this. I didn't think about it because I start zathura from CLI or from my file manager.

[-]

HurasmusBDraggin@reddit

Always be switching 😂

[-]

araujoms@reddit

Oh no. If it's anything like the switch from gedit to gnome-text-editor it will be a disaster.

[-]

kwyxz@reddit

As I am working on a future transition of our workstations to RHEL 10 I would love it if you could elaborate about this disaster?

[-]

araujoms@reddit

The replacement is a bare-bones editor that is about as useful as nano. The solution is simply to ignore it and install gedit, which still exists.

[-]

kwyxz@reddit

Lovely. I will bring this up with Red Hat because dropping a full-featured editor for the shiny new thing that barely does anything is not what an Enterprise-grade distribution is supposed to do. Thanks for the insight!

[-]

tristan957@reddit

GNOME Text Editor is a much better application for a generic text editor. Windows ships with Notepad which fills the role well. GNOME Text Editor is also developed by Red Hat (Christian Hergert). GEdit is also stuck on GTK3 and the maintainer (Sebastian Wilmet) seems uninterested in a GTK4 port or collaborating with the rest of the GNOME community. Christian actively seeks input from designers on the Design Team. Christian maintains a lot of great software in GNOME and is also the maintainer of GNOME Builder.

[-]

araujoms@reddit

Thanks for your service.

I was very confused as I updated Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04, and suddenly gedit couldn't do anything. Until I researched, and found out GNOME had removed it because of some developer drama, and the thing I was trying to use wasn't gedit.

[-]

marcthe12@reddit

Well it is a fork of evince rather than developed from scratch. So feature difference will be less.

[-]

MoussaAdam@reddit

of course

[-]

Metaroxy@reddit

So they went from a pretty good name that is easy to search for to “papers”

[-]

alievieve@reddit

It's a short name that noone knows what it means, how is it better lol

[-]

Metaroxy@reddit

The same could be said for Acrobat, yet Adobe has stuck with the name.

[-]

Richard_Masterson@reddit

"Acrobat PDF" or "Adobe Acrobat" are way better than "papers PDF" or "gnome papers."

It's a terrible name just like "Files" and "Video" are.

[-]

phunphun@reddit

GNOME Papers is the same as Adobe Acrobat, and the first result is the correct link in both cases.

[-]

Metaroxy@reddit

That was my point.

[-]

Helmic@reddit

you can punch it into a search engine and it'll come up as the first result. "papers"

here are the ddg search results for "pdf papers" https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=pdf+papers&ia=web it isn't even on the first page of results at all.

[-]

TobyTarazan@reddit

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gnome+papers&t=h_&ia=web

[-]

djj_@reddit

In true Gnome fashion :-)

[-]

FrequentWin4261@reddit

At least its not something like KPaper

[-]

nhermosilla14@reddit

At some point in the past it would have been GPaper. And yes, both KPaper and GPaper are way better options. Do a simple Google search about "Papers" and get exactly what you are looking for: the best location to buy actual paper.

[-]

Helmic@reddit

of course not, you could google kpaper.

[-]

xte2@reddit

As usual Gnome destroy anything good or acceptable they have...

[-]

Strange_Quail946@reddit

Have you ever tried Papers... What functionalities are you lacking compared to Evince?

[-]

Isofruit@reddit

I have and found out the project does not and will not implement hjkl shortcuts for moving a document around within papers. Since my "workflow" when reading comics consists of "jumping" down via space and adjusting via j/k as my arrow-keys are tiny and thus a pain to use, I heavily prefer those shortcuts.

Papers does not intend to ever have those the same way evince does, they intentionally freed those up to put other functionality on them in the future. Since I can't remap hotkeys in GTK (at least I'm not aware of how that would work if it were possible), that means I won't be migrating to papers.

[-]

xte2@reddit

Not about functionality but about evolution path: Gnome is heading toward a childish desktop to be used maybe on tablets. Not something usable for real work.

[-]

NotJohnDarnielle@reddit

People have been saying this since GNOME 3.0 nearly 15 years ago, and yet a ton of Linux users are still using it as their desktop every day. If you don't like it, that's fine, but if it's "not usable for real work" that's on you, not the desktop.

[-]

xte2@reddit

Yes, and many like me have left long ago. New users are there because they do not know other paradigms, typically coming from Windows. I "use" Gnome since I've succeeded in pushing GNU/Linux desktop for the enterprise, but I'm frankly tired at every update. Tired of users complaint about new stuff, tired about broken extensions and overall design.

I've started proposing XFCE to some, most do not like it since it's too '90s-style, but maybe that was the closed option end-users will have, while others will be on EXWM/i3/BSPWM/* and finally GNU/Linux will be GNU OS on one side, Lindows/Winux on the other.

[-]

MoussaAdam@reddit

New users are there because they do not know other paradigms

the is as nonsense as it gets. GNOME is the exception when it comes to this. GNOME rejects the desktop metaphor that many systems rely on. you don't come to GNOME for using a familiar paradigm

tired about broken extensions

shouldn't be a problem if you use a few well maintained ones. if you have to change GNOME too much, use anther DE. otherwise stay in your playground making GNOME something it's not intended to be

[-]

xte2@reddit

For a Windows user Gnome is very familiar: a launcher-bar, a menu, in a different form but still a menu with search&narrow support and some extra infos, just laid out differently.

A tiling WM is a different paradigm.

The fact that's extensions are fragile means the basic design is bad.

To cut short: you use GNU/Linux and you are happy I suppose. Not read the Unix Haters Handbook and ask yourself if you agree or not with it's authors and if you have felt or not the deep annoyances they have written down.

[-]

NotJohnDarnielle@reddit

lmao what a fuckin nerd

[-]

Farados55@reddit

I code in GNOME on a daily basis. It's perfectly competent and works out of the box. What is this evolution you see towards not being able to do "real work"? You're just blabbing a bunch and not presenting any real complaints. So weird.

[-]

xte2@reddit

Well... I've complaint since the Nautilus Spatial View (if you remember that), which was in the same line than today evolution.

Gnome SHell compared to the dead Ubuntu Unity is another example: Unity was "hidden but still there when you need it", Gnome SHell do it's best to be at the center pushing people to use visual effect "to see it's beauty". Nautilus it's the same story.

I can makes you a loooong list but the fact it that old school GNU/Linux users are like me on some WM, since all desktop environments are now useless blobs. Kde from kde4, Gnome from Gnome SHell. It's not a matter of minimalism it's simply the idea behind the UI. One thing Gnome do well: removing the concept of desktop icons. Most other new stuff goes to the ruin.

[-]

MoussaAdam@reddit

I can makes you a loooong list but the fact it that old school GNU/Linux users are like me on some WM

I use WMs all the time and I love them. that's actually why I tolerate GNOME the most.

GNOME is the closest to the WM workflow: - no close or minimize, just like a WM - no desktop icons, just like a WM - no dock, type the name of the program, just like a WM - Heavy use of workspaces, like a WM - a tiny strip on the top to avoid taking up space. just like a WM - no server side decorations, like most WMs

[-]

OffsetXV@reddit

And, importantly, these are basically all things you can very easily configure KDE Plasma to do, as well. Like, in minutes. If someone who's a fan of WMs can't use either of the two big DEs properly, it sounds more like their problem than the DE's.

[-]

gmes78@reddit

As a KDE user, I have GNOME on my laptop, and it's a perfectly capable desktop environment. The apps may look simplified, but they have all the features you'd expect.

The idea that GNOME is "childish" and "made for tablets" is itself childish and ignorant.

[-]

Existing-Tough-6517@reddit

Not a gnome fan here but shouldn't you try it and completing options and render an opinion on why it sucks beyond the UI style

[-]

Strange_Quail946@reddit

Then your opinion about GNOME has nothing to do with this particular change. Maybe you should try Papers first before criticising. But what do I know, I do "unreal" work on GNOME ¯⁠\\\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠\_⁠/⁠¯

[-]

dawsers@reddit

I really like Papers, but it doesn't support Postscript (.ps) documents. So I need evince for now.

[-]

abotelho-cbn@reddit

Lol, it started as a GTK4 fork of Evince and became a seperate project to improve it.

For all intents and purposes it is Evince NG...

[-]

xte2@reddit

And Gnome is less and less appealing every new release...

[-]

kinda_guilty@reddit

To you. To some others, it gets better and better.

[-]

abotelho-cbn@reddit

How is that a valid reply to my comment?

[-]

CornFleke@reddit

Why? Evince seems fine to me, although I only use my document viewers to just "view" documents.

[-]

xte2@reddit

It's part of a continuous child-ification of Gnome, more and more narcissistic, and less and less functional.

It's not about specific features it's about UI and codebase evolution.

[-]

starlevel01@reddit

I think you're lost, Phoronix comments is that way

[-]

HatBoxUnworn@reddit

I for one like a pleasant and clean UI to my apps

[-]

-RFC__2549-@reddit

What in the actual fuck are you talking about?

[-]

Traditional_Hat3506@reddit

When I'm in a make shit up competition and my opponent is xte2

[-]

RebTexas@reddit

Gnome went to shit after gnome 2, that's a fact.

[-]

spin81@reddit

Found the MATE user

[-]

RebTexas@reddit

Real.

[-]

Accurate_Hornet@reddit

Linux users going a minute without complaining about new features challenge

[-]

xte2@reddit

I'm not complaint about new features, I like evolution, I complaint about childish choices.

[-]

AdmiralQuokka@reddit

Maybe give a single reason why you prefer evince over papers?

[-]

MatchingTurret@reddit

Nonsense. How could they even do that? The old sources will be around for as long as there is an Internet.

[-]

PhotographingNature@reddit

For those not familiar (I wasn't) : Papers is a fork of Evince, updated to use GTK4 and LibAdwaita.

[-]

trtryt@reddit

did the cut features like what Gnome usually do?

[-]

ChimayBlue2016@reddit

Don't know why you got downvoted, it's a well known fact. As a devoted gnome fan i am looking more and more at KDE...

[-]

poudink@reddit

it's libadwaita so theming is defacto worse. dunno what else they'd cut from evince tho. it's not like it had all that many features in the first place.

[-]

mzalewski@reddit

Why couldn’t they just update Evince?

It’s their own project, isn’t it? Why go through troubles of forking and renaming?

[-]

Farados55@reddit

Maybe they wanted to keep Evince as is.

[-]

mzalewski@reddit

That’s what git branch / tag is for.

[-]

spin81@reddit

That's not how Git works. There are various ways to branch/tag and that is just one of them - a very inefficient one at that, because if you do what I think you're suggesting that they do, you're always cherry-picking and rebasing.

[-]

MissTetraHyde@reddit

I use interactive rebase on every commit just to make sure nobody else can predict what hashes my commit history will have anymore. Don't want people knowing my next move. /j

[-]

spin81@reddit

The hashes are cryptographically secure!

In 2005

[-]

Farados55@reddit

You wanna keep a huge revamp/refactor in a different branch forever? Or you wanna make that into main and keep the original in a different branch? Why would you do that? Why not just fork it and keep it completely separate instead of having the baggage of old repository leftovers like branches, tags, etc?

You're describing what is essentially a fork without a separate repo lol it's really not that big of a deal.

[-]

usbeehu@reddit

This is something that happens with Gnome apps all the time.

[-]

mzalewski@reddit

I thought part of GNOME “offering” is the shared ownership and infrastructure to avoid situations like that. Looks I was wrong.

[-]

Misicks0349@reddit

im not sure what you mean, situations like what?

[-]

mzalewski@reddit

Alright, I found a story presented by fork author: https://blogs.gnome.org/pabloyoyoista/2024/01/26/on-how-to-fork-a-gnome-core-app-without-meaning-to-do-so/

TL;DR: Evince was not really a GNOME project, but some guys project, and that guy did not have enough time to engage with large project like GTK4 port.

[-]

LvS@reddit

The evince maintainers didn't like the patches.

[-]

mocket_ponsters@reddit

But Evince was updated to GTK4 earlier this week and will likely be released as such soon...

I'd really like to know what the relationship between Evince and Papers will be in the future. I've had issues with LibAdwaita apps in the past on other desktop environments, so I really hope it remains more of a downstream fork rather than a shift in development.

[-]

jack123451@reddit

Wasn't Evince moribund for a while with lots of pull requests stuck in review? Papers only got forked after the initial GTK 4 was taking forever to get merged.

[-]

PhotographingNature@reddit

I'm guessing none. Gnome will develop Papers in the direction they want it to develop. Some developers of Evince will want to keep Evince as Evince, and will continue to develop it.

[-]

tmahmood@reddit

And that's the beauty of OSS! :-) Everyone wins!

[-]

JockstrapCummies@reddit

It also has bugs in printing.

[-]

mohr_@reddit

I've had tons of problems printing with Papers, ultimately using okular.

[-]

ECrispy@reddit

Gnome loves to break stuff like this. KDE on the other hand is consistent and their apps are best in class.

[-]

kinda_guilty@reddit

What's broken? You can still install and use evince, and it still has active development.

[-]

ECrispy@reddit

exactly my point, nothing is broken technically but user's workflow will be - eg if someone was used to the old app.

Gnome is notorious for replacing old apps with new, dumbed down shinier versions with less features, so at least in this case we get something with the same feature set since its a fork.

[-]

alievieve@reddit

What difference is there compared to if Evince got a GTK4 update and would still be the default. It's still the same app and same workflow?

Also lmao "less features"

[-]

Isofruit@reddit

I mean, there are 2 things, both minor:

1) Evince allowed bookmarking... something. Never used the feature, but did see the icon and couldn't find anything similar in papres

2) At least for me that one's annoying - hjkl shortcuts to move the page around are missing in papers. For reading comics I actually like going full-width and then scrolling down using spacebar and adjusting that with the j/k keys (as my arrow keys are tiny, frame.work laptop). Opened an issue about it, let's see if those shortcuts get reimplemented or whether there was a deeper reason for it.

[-]

kinda_guilty@reddit

Evince still exists and is actively developed. I don't see the problem.

[-]

GenBlob@reddit

You KDE fanboys are so obnoxious. You did no research but you still felt the need to say KDE is superior. Genuinely the most pretentious user base on Linux.

[-]