I’ve been using Firefox to view PDFs and it works fine. Recently though I wanted to try something more minimal with vim keybindings. Found two options: Zathura and tdf (terminal pdf viewer).

What I’m curious about is why someone would choose a TUI pdf viewer over a regular one (like Zathura). What are the actual advantages people find in practice. tdf mentions being fast but I wonder if that’s something you’d actually notice day to day?

Also I remember seeing screenshots where PDFs looked transparent or matched the terminal colors. Is that actually a feature of some of these viewers ? Maybe someone uses one here?

Tdf seems relatively popular with 1.4k github stars.

  • monovergent@lemmy.ml
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    12 hours ago

    The only time I find myself in line with CLI purists is when I need to SSH into a machine without X forwarding. Had no idea that there were terminal PDF viewers, but now I know if I ever need to consult a document remotely.