Why PDF Sucks

PDF really sucks.

• It is painstaking to jump to the table of content, index, appendix, or particular chapter, or numbered figures. Unless you are reading novels. Reading programing doc usually means frequent need to jump to definitions, figures, sections, etc.
• PDF paging is slow. You have to wait for it to render.
• Copy and paste of code snippet don't work well. You get one long line, with garbled up characters. Some PDF, actually prevent you from doing any copy and paste.
• Rendering is fixed, inflexible. If you magnify too much, the right side is cut off.
• Major security risk. PDF file allow embedded JavaScript. Virus or other holes are frequently discovered.

How to Disable JavaScript in PDF

In Adobe PDF viewer, go to preference, and click disable checkbox there.

Use Evince PDF Reader to avoid JavaScript

You can use the open source PDF reader, Evince, available for Microsoft Windows and Linux.

As of 2015-12-22, Evince does not support JavaScript in PDF. This is a great thing. [info source https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338721 ]

Evince home page https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince

Evince is bundled by default on Ubuntu, Fedora.

Or, you can install it by

# install the pdf viewer evince
sudo apt-get install evince

Convert PDF to HTML/Text

You can use the following linux programs.

• pdftohtml
• pdftotext
• pdfimages
• pdfinfo
• pdftocairo
• pdftoppm
• pdftops

Convert PDF to Image Files

You can convert PDF to image files.

If you have ImageMagick install, just run:

# convert pdf to image files, using imagemagick
convert name.pdf new.png

This will generate many png files, each one named new1.png, new2.png, etc.

[see ImageMagick Tutorial]