Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

document viewer A file viewer is a Software application that represents the data stored in a computer file in a human-readable form. The file contents are formatted in a meaningful way and then displayed on the screen or printed out. Also, they may be read al ...

supporting many

document file format A document file format is a text or binary file format for storing documents on a storage media, especially for use by computers. There currently exist a multitude of incompatible document file formats. Examples of XML-based open standards ar ...

s including

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, ...

, DjVu,

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

, XPS and

DVI Digital Visual Interface (DVI) is a video display interface developed by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG). The digital interface is used to connect a video source, such as a video display controller, to a display device, such as a compu ...

. It is designed for the GNOME

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

. The developers of Evince intended to replace the multiple GNOME

document A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" o ...

viewers with a single and simple

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

. The Evince motto sums up the project aim: "Simply a Document Viewer". GNOME releases have included Evince since GNOME 2.12 (September 2005). Evince's code is written mainly in C, with a small part (specifically, the interface with Poppler) written in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significa ...

. Many

Linux distributions A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading on ...

– including

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', '' Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All th ...

Fedora Linux Fedora Linux is a Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of open-source technologies. Fedora is the upstream (softwa ...

and

Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu (which is in turn based on Debian), bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose to ...

– include Evince as the default document viewer. Evince is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

subject to the requirements of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...

version 2 or later. The Evince FAQ highlights the meaning of the word "Evince" as "to show or express something clearly".

History

Evince began as a rewrite of GPdf, which its support programmers had started to find unwieldy to

maintain Maintenance may refer to: Biological science * Maintenance of an organism * Maintenance respiration Non-technical maintenance * Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English * Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doct ...

. Evince quickly surpassed the functionality of GPdf and replaced both GPdf and GGV in the September 2005 release of GNOME 2.12. There was at one time a Windows version of Evince and it was then included on the

VALO-CD VALO-CD, a distribution of open-source software on a CD for Microsoft Windows, aims to spread knowledge and the use of open-source software. VALO-CD originates from Finland, and was originally available only in Finnish. Since version 7, an inter ...

, a collection of "Best of Free and Open Source Software for Windows".

Features

Evince incorporates an integrated search that displays the number of results found and highlights the results on the page. Users can optionally display (in the left

sidebar Sidebar may refer to: * Sidebar (publishing) * Sidebar (law) * Sidebar (computing), a type of graphical user interface element ** Windows Sidebar, in Windows Vista (rename Windows Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7) ** Bing Sidebar, a section of the ...

of the viewer)

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image- ...

s of pages to assist in page navigation within a document. When documents support indices, Evince gives the option of showing the document index for quickly moving from one section to another. Evince can show two pages at a time, left and right, and offers full-screen and slide-show views. Evince allows the selection of text in PDF files and allows users to highlight and copy text from documents made from scanned images, if the PDF includes OCR data. Evince used to obey the

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement militai ...

restrictions of PDF files, which may prevent copying, printing, or converting some PDF files, however this has been made optional, and turned off by default in

gconf GConf was a system used by the GNOME desktop environment for storing configuration settings for the desktop and applications. It is similar to the Windows Registry. It was deprecated as part of the GNOME 3 transition. Migration to its replaceme ...

. Since version 3.18.2 evince allows for text and highlight annotations of documents.

Supported document formats

Evince supports many different single and multi-page document formats: ;Built-in support *

using the Poppler

backend Back end, back-end or backend may refer to: Electronics Computing * Back end (computing), the data access layer in software architecture * Back-end CASE * Back-end database, a database accessed indirectly through an external application * Back-e ...

using the

Ghostscript Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language file ...

backend. * Multi-page

* DjVu using the DjVuLibre backend * OpenDocument Presentation (.odp) when built with the --enable-impress option *

Images An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimension ...

(currently included as a toy, but needs work) * CBR, CBZ, CB7 (Comic Book Archive file) *

Adobe Illustrator Artwork Adobe Illustrator Artwork (AI) is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing single-page vector-based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats. The .ai filename extension is used by Adobe Illustrator. The AI file ...

;Optional support * XPS ;Possible or planned support *

Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

using libpreview (currently alpha-quality) *

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includi ...

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed ...

AbiWord AbiWord () is a free and open-source software word processor. It is written in C++ and since version 3 it is based on GTK+ 3. The name "AbiWord" is derived from the root of the Spanish word "'' abierto''", meaning "open".Project MascoAbi the Ant ...

;Not supported *

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphon ...

Mobi Mobi or MOBI may refer to: Companies * Mobi (company), an American wireless provider Computing * .mobi, internet top domain name * .mobi, a file extension of the deprecated Mobipocket e-book format People * Mobi Fehr (born 1994), American socc ...

References

External links

* {{GNOME Free PDF readers Free software programmed in C GNOME Core Applications PostScript Office software that uses GTK

History

Features

Supported document formats

See also

References

External links