Comparison

In the lab, we put MuPDF through a test to compare document viewers Okular and Evince from the KDE and Gnome desktop environments, respectively. Additionally, we investigated Xpdf – it formed the basis for MuPDF at the start of MuPDF's development – and QPDF. None of the competitor programs failed completely when faced with the complex test PDF; on the other hand, none of them actually impressed with anything like smooth rendering.

It either took several seconds for the embedded photos to appear, or the photos were depicted as frames for a long time until the page was finally rendered. Scrolling in the PDF, which weighed in at about 30MB and totaled 94 pages, was quite a slow process in all of the competitor applications.

The experience with MuPDF was totally different: Even on the fairly low-powered laptop, it only took a fraction of a second to open the document completely. Scrolling with the mouse or the keyboard was such a smooth experience that even a critical observer would find it difficult to detect any delay. Selecting a page (e.g., by entering 54g, which takes you to page 54 from anywhere in the document) – opens the corresponding page directly without any hesitation. Even staccato pressing of the up and down keys did not faze MuPDF in the least.

Compared with this, Evince took around seven seconds to jump from page 1 to page 54. The chart in Figure 2 shows that – on average – MuPDF is 78 percent faster than Poppler and even twice as fast in terms of peak performance. Even the well-known and excellent Foxit Reader for Windows cannot keep up with this pace. MuPDF does not just leave a good impression on the PC, the tool also impresses with its rendering of complex documents on Android (Figure 3).

Figure 2: Results from comparative tests show MuPDF's speed advantage over Poppler [8].

Figure 3: MuPDF is also the fastest document viewer on Android.

Conclusions

With its antiquated user interface, which does not offer any controls, and its reduced feature scope and keyboard shortcuts, MuPDF looks like a relic from the last millennium. But, to view a PDF document, all you need is a display. In terms of speed, no other document viewer can compete with MuPDF.

If you need a printing function, Zathura is a useful alternative. The program builds on MuPDF's underpinnings but gives you the option of printing the active document. If you do need to manage an extremely large and complex PDF document, you know where to turn for help; keep the program MuPDF in mind.