STDU Viewer

I think I found my PDF reader for Windows

Knitting pattern for Ajeng Sioresmi's [Everyday Face Mask](https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/everyday-face-mask)
Knitting pattern for Ajeng Sioresmi's [Everyday Face Mask](https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/everyday-face-mask)
Posted
Categories
post
Uses
windows
Tags
tools

All right. Real quick, before I get distracted by something else. I’m over in the Windows partition again. I want to read my assorted ebooks and other PDFs.

Looked around at several readers — rather, several PDF editing suites, as plain old readers seem vanishingly rare. Settled on STDU Viewer.

STDU Viewer supports several document and image formats. It’s free for noncommercial or educational use. I can read my PDF and EPub files, in a reasonable tabbed interface.

That’s honestly all I need. But being able to highlight passages is a nice bonus.

screenshot of highlighting

STDU Viewer does not alter the files directly when highlighting. Instead, it stores information about highlighted files and passages in %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\STDUViewer\Highlight.xml.

STDU Viewer also lets you create split views of your document. Handy when you’re doing exercises! It doesn’t let you open another document in the split, unfortunately.

screenshot of split view

Caveats

  1. Use the “Download free STDU Viewer” link. I couldn’t get the MSI installer to work.
  2. I couldn’t find any documentation. Maybe that’s in the paid version?
  3. Which reminds me: I couldn’t find a link to buy STD Viewer if I was so inclined. Presumably you get pricing information by emailing support (link in the ? → About menu item)
  4. Here’s a bit of documentation: bookmark and highlight passages by selecting them with the “Select Text” tool and right clicking over selected text.

Tweaks

I don’t like clicking any more than I have to, so I set extra shortcut keys in Options. One for highlighting with h, and a couple to get j / k scrolling like I’m accustomed to in my Linux desktop.

screenshot of options panel

That’s it, really

Despite my annoyance at the documentation, STDUViewer provides thefunctionality I needed in a PDF reader. No more, and no less. Check it out if that sounds pleasing to you!