Sumatra PDF Review

Sumatra PDF is a simple file reader can open and read a multitude of file type. It can read, to quote their website, “PDF, eBook (epub, mobi), comic book (cbz/cbr), DjVu, XPS, CHM, image viewer for Windows.” It's first version was released back in June 1st, 2006 by developer Krzysztof Kowalczyk, and is now on version 3.5 with plans to release version 3.6 in the future. It's open-source and has an active community dedicated to improving and adding features to the software. It's currently only available for Windows as it's development is strong integrated with Windows specific systems and coding so porting to another system such as MacOS would require a rewrite of the code.

I downloaded Sumatra before I found PDFgear. While it was disappointing it couldn't actually edit with PDF documents, I kept it around because I enjoyed its user interface. I love it's browser-like setup. It make it really easy to flit between multiple files I'm going through, and it helps that I can use the same browser shortcut to move between documents as well (ctrl-tab, ctrl-shift-tab, ctrl-w, etc.). It's most common use for me is sorting through homework PDFs to make sure they're export correctly from PDFgear or Libre Writer. I'm also an avid eBook enjoyer and file organizer, so while I read all my eBooks on my tablet (in another app that'll have it's own review in the future) Sumatra PDF viewer is great for being able to skim a document before sorting it in my personal digital library.