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LawPDF 0.2.45 — Linux, review comments, speech, and footnote sources
Created by Professor Yonathan Arbel. A free, open-source PDF reader for legal
scholarship, close reading, footnotes, and annotation.
What's new
Release-time security updates. Updates ctutils, rustls-webpki, and
webpki-roots to address newly published advisories found by the release audit.
The unpublished 0.2.44 candidate was superseded before public distribution.
Linux x86_64. The first Linux release targets Ubuntu 24.04 or a compatible
modern glibc desktop. The portable archive includes PDFium, the same local
Review Mode models used on Windows and Mac, and their license notices. Run
./lawpdf after extracting it; optional ./install.sh adds the application-menu
entry. The in-app menu can register LawPDF as the default PDF reader and checks
that the change took effect. Linux updates are manual.
Comments beside the article. Review Mode now has a visible choice between
Show footnotes and Show comments, displaying one set in the margin at a
time. Comments already embedded in a PDF retain their authors and existing
reply threads. LawPDF comments show your configured name, and different authors
receive distinct, consistent colors. Set your name under ⋯ → Comment name…
or click your own name on a comment to open the global name setting. Other
reviewers' names remain their own. This release displays existing reply threads;
it does not add a new threaded-reply editor.
The Linux port and imported-comment foundations adapt Sarah Lawsky's
MIT-licensed LawPDF fork. Her Linux packaging, CUPS printing, desktop integration,
and comment work are credited in
Contributors
and the third-party notices.
One speech choice throughout the app. Select System speech, ElevenLabs,
or OpenRouter in Settings or the narration controls. System speech keeps the
text on the computer. API narration and Create MP3… use your own provider
key, model, and voice; provider charges apply. You can read footnotes after the
body. Work runs in the background, and Stop cancels LawPDF's narration without
canceling another application's speech. A provider request already in progress
may finish remotely.
On Linux, System speech requires espeak-ng or espeak. API playback requires
ffplay (FFmpeg) or mpg123; MP3 export works without either player. API keys
use the operating system's credential store, including Secret Service on Linux.
Footnote source discovery. A note's Find source button opens an existing
URL or DOI directly. For an unresolved citation, LawPDF requests candidate
article links from BBGPT at bbgpt.battleoftheforms.com; if that service is
unavailable, it queries Crossref at api.crossref.org and labels the fallback
results. Find article links queues up to 32 unresolved notes in the prepared
Review. Choose a matching result yourself; that note then opens the chosen
source during the reading session. Search results are candidates, not verified
citation matches.
Only the requested footnote text is sent for citation discovery, including each
note you explicitly queue in a batch. The PDF and article body are not uploaded
by these searches. Opening a document does not contact either citation service
or start a search. Requests run asynchronously with bounded queues, duplicate
suppression, and a bounded local results cache. Failed or incomplete searches
are not cached as completed results; batches pause after a failed or unfinished
request and can resume after an explicit retry. Search again bypasses a
cached result. Direct-download GitHub update checks remain separate from these
on-demand citation searches. See the
privacy guide
before using network-backed features.
Linux printing. Ctrl+P opens a CUPS print dialog with printer, copy count,
and page ranges. It prepares a private PDF copy containing current, including
unsaved, annotations, then submits it only when you press Print. Cancel or Escape
closes the confirmation without submitting it. Printer discovery, copy export,
and submission run off the UI thread. Service errors are shown, and a successful
queue receipt means accepted for printing, not confirmed paper output. Printing
requires the CUPS client commands. Mac retains its standard system print dialog.
Linux local OCR uses separately installed Tesseract. Comment import, printer
and speech discovery, and source searches begin on demand; these features do not
add service discovery or citation requests to application startup. Local Review
Mode continues to use the existing model-led reading pipeline.
Download and installation
- Windows installer — 64-bit Windows.
- Windows portable ZIP — extract the entire ZIP, then run
lawpdf.exe. - Mac ZIP — Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later.
- Linux archive — x86_64 Ubuntu 24.04 or a compatible modern glibc desktop; see Linux setup.
Close older LawPDF versions before installing. On Mac, extract the ZIP and
replace LawPDF.app in Applications. On Linux, keep the extracted directory
together; extract future versions into a new directory and run its install.sh.
Keep backups of important PDFs while using this public beta.
The direct Windows downloads are not publisher-signed. The Mac app is ad hoc
signed and is not notarized; first launch may require
Apple's per-app approval process.
The Microsoft Store edition has a
separate submission and certification process. This GitHub release does not
establish Store availability of version 0.2.45.
Verification and scope
Before release preparation, the
PR #31 candidate recorded
1,185 passing tests and successful CI checks. Those are pre-release results
for the candidate; they do not certify newly rebuilt release artifacts.
The tagged release workflow builds Windows, Mac, and Linux packages from one
source commit. Its Windows job installs the exact installer and checks its
checksum, product/file/runtime versions, installed executable identity, Start
Menu targets, and required packaged model runtime. Linux packaging verifies its
pinned libraries and complete model runtime; CI extracts the archive and checks
OCR and desktop-menu installation/removal.
The downloadable
RELEASE-VERIFICATION.json
is the artifact-specific record: it identifies the released source commit,
successful required workflow runs, signed update-package hashes and sizes, and
Windows installation evidence. Use that record to identify the exact published
build, separately from the earlier PR results. Publication verifies all four
package checksums and GitHub build provenance before making the release public.
Hosted Windows installation evidence is separate from installation on the
maintainer's own Windows hardware. That user-hardware installation remains
pending for this release; CI success does not claim it has happened.
Downloads include SHA256SUMS.txt, UPDATE-MANIFEST.json, and
UPDATE-MANIFEST.sig. The detached Ed25519 signature authenticates the three
Windows/Mac automatic-update artifacts and remains compatible with installed
clients. The Linux download is authenticated by its checksum and GitHub build
provenance and uses manual installation. Application update signatures do not
replace Windows publisher signing or Apple notarization.
Beta status and privacy
Full VoiceOver/NVDA workflows, broad reading fidelity, large-document performance,
cloud-sync conflicts, field reliability, and interrupted automatic updates
remain under evaluation. Verify reconstructed quotations and citations against
the original PDF. The PDF worker contains crashes but is not an operating-system
security sandbox. Automated coverage does not establish every printer,
distribution, speech engine, API model, or voice configuration.
Local reading, annotations, and System speech keep document contents on the
computer. API speech sends the requested article text and selected footnotes to
the chosen provider. Citation discovery sends only explicitly requested
footnote text to the services described above. Review the
privacy guide
and report problems without
uploading confidential documents, private research, or API keys.
License and no warranty
Created and maintained by Professor Yonathan Arbel. Free and open source under
the MIT License,
including commercial use.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE,
AND NONINFRINGEMENT. The MIT License also limits the authors' liability.
There is no warranty of accuracy, uninterrupted operation, document preservation,
or fitness for a particular legal matter.