Readest instead of SumatraPDF suggestion

[Svetloslav]

I would like to suggest, if possible, to move away from SumatraPDF plugin and go with Readest based plugin instead.
Readest is an open-source project on Github. For the short period of development, it has evolved so much, that it has left SumatraPDF in the dust. Readest uses WebView2 and with this will be similar to implement, when compared to other plugins. The developer of Readest is doing a tremendous job in immediately fixing all reported bugs and is having new versions sometimes daily.
Readest's handling of EPUB, MOBI, and all digital publications is much more advanced, when compared to SumatraPDF. Extremely complex EPUBs open in Redest instantly, while the same EPUBs take forever to open in SumatraPDF. I think this will be a night and day addition to QuickLook and will enable it to instantly and reliably open any digital publications, of course excluding PDF.

[emako]

SumatraPDF supports plugin commands to be integrated by QuickLook, but Readest does not seem to have similar functions.

[Svetloslav]

You can surely ask @chrox. He is very helpful and open to any suggestion. Certainly, much more than the developer of SumatraPDF. If you have used both SumatraPDF and Readest you will understand, that moving to Readest based plugin will be of enormous benefit for the usefulness of QL. The concept of Readest from get-go is to encompass all digital formats in a modern way. In contrast SumatraPDF was envisioned as a quick PDF viewer, to which later were embedded other capabilities, and today it looks like a small shed to which later were added many floors, but the base simply can not sustain them.

[rabelux]

What would be the advantage over the pdf-plugin-native or https://github.com/mooflu/WebViewPlus? They both use WebView already.

[emako]

Readest, although not very efficient, does provide a good UI.
However, I’m not very experienced in web development, and I hope someone can join in to help develop plugins.

[Svetloslav]

What would be the advantage over the pdf-plugin-native or https://github.com/mooflu/WebViewPlus? They both use WebView already.

I don't think we are talking here about PDF support. The pdf-plugin-native is already running on WebView2 and is working quite well. I refer to the other digital publication formats (epub, mobi, text, djvu, etc.) Here is where you will discover the advantages of Readest over SumatraPDF. Any extremenly complicated and heavy EPUB, MOBI opens instantly in Readest and it feels quite snappy. Do the same in SumatraPDF and prepare for a long, long wait. The reason is while @chrox immediately implements new ideas, innovations and fixes bugs almost daily, the dev of SumatraPDF would respond to ANYTHING and EVERYTHING with a public query and only if there is "enough" interest in a particular feature he would do something about it. Most people when asked, respond with unrelated answers, or are conservative about anything unrelated to PDF. That is why I regularly get emails from the dev of SumatraPDF with requests to vote for one, or another feature, but almost nothing gets developed ever. It is a vicious circle with no end to it. The support for EPUB in SumatraPDF is a sad reality, and with the QL plugin simple PDFs open with back spaces between pages. Frankly at this stage of development of the QL plugin I simply don't use it. It is faster and better to open any EPUB in Readest, than to preview it in QL through SumatraPDF plugin.
That is the reason, why by going with Readest we will get constant improvements to the benefit of all users of QL.

[rabelux]

Got your point, thx for elaborating.
Epub would be supported by WebviewPlus at least.

[Svetloslav]

Sad part is that while Readest uses its own rendering engine for all digital publications, SumatraPDF uses a plugin called MuPDF, which has very atrocious support for most digital standards (pdf, epub, mobi, fb2, cbz, cbt, etc.). That is why using the SumatraPDF infrastructure through a plugin is a bad, bad idea and will never work. But I understand @emako, when declaring to be lacking experience in web development, necessary to create a plugin based on Readest. I wish there was somebody to help us in this development. At the current state of SumatraPDF, there is no practical use for me off of it, so I am disabling it.

[Svetloslav]

Lately I have been experimenting with the old EpubViewer plugin from 2018. Actually, it is surprisingly fast, although it lacks bells and whistles. In its basic form works much better than the heavy SumatraPDF plugin. I hope there is somebody to help update the EpubViewer by bringing it to the latest WebView engine capabilities, since at the end of the day all EPUBs are nothing more than HTML documents. And yes, it is unable to open all the other formats like mobi, fb2, cbz, cbt, etc., but EPUB is by far the most established, open format. Given the fact, that there is at present no hope to get the real deal - a Readest plugin, I find a consolable alternative in an updated EpubViewer.

[emako]

Looking forward to the emergence of a web developer.