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diff --git a/2025/talks/reader.md b/2025/talks/reader.md index 66de948d..5fe12ead 100644 --- a/2025/talks/reader.md +++ b/2025/talks/reader.md @@ -25,6 +25,194 @@ About the speaker: I’m Divyá from India. My background has been as a mathematics teacher and now I'm a programmer. I’ve been hacking on free software as a hobby and, for the past three to four years, living inside Emacs. I loved reading PDFs in Emacs via pdf-tools, but poor hardware and maintenance gaps pushed me to build a faster reader. I learned MuPDF and Emacs Dynamic Modules and wrote The Emacs Reader: a dynamic-module-based, high-performance, resource-friendly document viewer for Emacs that supports PDFs and other formats (EPUB, CBZ) while integrating natively with Emacs. +## Discussion / notes + +- Q: Is there scope for integrating the C library into Emacs itself + with muPDF becoming an optional dependency? + - A: That will entail having a pdf engine integrated into Emacs + source-tree, not sure if that\'s a good idea. +- Q: The dynamic modules sound great, and it\'s amazing they\'re there + since 2017. Why is it so slow to take off, do you think? Is there + prior art with them? + - A: Mostly because Elisp is so nice to use for almost everything + you need to do in Emacs. It\'s only in very specific cases that + you require to care about real-time latency and memory + efficiency. And packages like libvterm and others do use it for + such purposes. +- Q: How is pdf-tools difficult to install? I install it using the + built in package manager. Looking at the emacs-reader installation + instructions, I don\'t see how install it that easily. I don\'t use + use-package or straight. Question answered in presentation. +- A: Just the list of dependencies required to build epdfinfo itself + makes it difficult, and when you install pdf-tools it does a huge + autotools build as well. Emacs Reader only (and will always) depends + on MuPDF (and Emacs too.). +- Q: What tool(s) did you use to measure the memory usage between the + three packages? + - A: Valgrind\'s massif + massif-visualizer + - I've been using perf and then visualizing with hotspot when debugging FFI in Common Lisp... it's felt successful + - (I've never had success with valgrind, but I've not dug deep with it) + - I discovered perf only recently when I had a deep need for low-level optimisation (which is not something I often need) - it's a really nice workflow! +- Q: How is the conversion between ELisp and the foreign language type + system done? For example when interfacing with a C++ library that + makes heavy use of C++ object system and templates? + - A: Basically, dynamic modules make you write Emacs Lisp in your + language. Consult the blogpost above for a more elaborate and + complete explanation. +- Q: pdf-tools renders high quality images. Does emacs-reader do that? + - A: Yes! We can render high-quality images just fine! +- Q: Can one look at pdf metadata with emacs-reader? Can annotations + be added? Does it understand forms? Can it handle encrypted pdfs? + - A: Support for all of this is planned. +- Q: I installed emacs-reader already. It is as promised :) Great job! + How can I associate odt files to open with emacs-reader? + - A: It should just work with the **find-file** command**.** +- Q: If a pdf file is open in emacs-reader and I regenerate the pdf + with some changes, does emacs-reader actually refresh the pdf on its + own or do I have to reload the pdf? + - A: Yes if it\'s a complete file with the same filename, but no + if it\'s still being created with LaTeX - we need SyncTeX for + that +- Q: What are the challenges with integrating with SyncTeX and AucTeX? + This would be great to see as pdf-tools handles this well. + - A: Planned, no major obstacles anticipated. The only reason we + haven\'t done it yet is more important highlighting and text + selection features planned. +- Q: Loved that presentation! Will you be giving another talk on the + architecture you went over? A deep-dive there would be awesome. + - A: Not at EmacsConf, but check out my streaming sessions at + [https://tv.dyne.org/c/phimulambda](https://tv.dyne.org/c/phimulambda){rel="noreferrer noopener"} + and I can talk about it there. +- Q: Is there search functionality? Something like isearch and occur? + - A: Not as such yet. But it is HIGH PRIORITY. +- Q: Does dynamic module prevent customization that Elisp usually + provide? (Advices, Hooks, etc). + - A: No, you can do everything on the Elisp side that you want. On + the dynamic side, it\'s a bit more tricky, not much support + there right now. +- Q: Follow-up on dynamic module: Do you usually create an Elisp shim + from the FFI and then use them with Elisp code? + - A: Yes, we usually wrap dynamic module functions in Elisp to + make sure the foreign function gets called when it\'s needed. +- Q: Is searching on the roadmap? Or is it already available as a + feature? Thanks! + - A: YES! HIGH PRIORITY \<3 +- Q: Will there be occur like searching? + - A: YES! Basically everything in PDF Tools is planned! +- Q: What is your timing expectation for it to appear on ELPA? + - A: By next major release, which will be in 1-2 months. +- Q: is this essentially FFI? + - A: Yup +- Q: interesting.. is that how webkit integration works? + - (audience): not really. +- Q: thank you. Are there other packages that use dynamic modules? + - (audience): Yes, vterm also uses a C module +- Q: Has any work been done to make org-noter work with emacs reader? + - (audience): not yet. It is in the plans, though. + - (audience): Nice. That would allow me to switch, because I use org-noter quite a bit. +- Q: Are any of you doing simple editing of PDFs in Emacs? I'm thinking about form-filling, adding signatures, that sort of thing + - A: that's something I'd also like to integrate once we have other basic features ready + - (audience): not yet. We do want to add annotation support though. Not sure if that's the same thing. + - I don't believe it is, but I could be mistaken + - A: slightly, but not exactly, mupdf does support forms and signatures so we shouldn't have much issues except making it work with emacs. + - I'm not fond of annotations, because it mutates the original PDF. +- Q: From the example when calling page 56, is there another thread immediately fetching the next 5 pages for cache? + - A: yeah indeed I'll talk about it later in the slides, you'll have to build mupdf from scratch in that case. + - A: there are multiple threads competing to fill the cache window, depending upon how long it takes to render each slice. +- Q: here is a question that I am a bit embarassed to ask... is there an easy way to install emacs-reader with package-vc without use-package? + - yes! + - I am asking just because I've been postponing learning use-package for ages + - you can use just package-vc totally. use-package uses package-vc under the hood anyway + - I tried this - (package-vc-install "https://codeberg.org/divyaranjan/emacs-reader") + - you need to do a build step. you can just go and do it manually +- Q: how does the dark mode compare to midnight mode in pdf-tools? + - it is simply inverting the colors + - Q: so it does not support setting the foreground and background colours? + - It does not. + - pdf-tools has pdf-view-themed-minor-mode that tries to match a PDF with the current theme. It's kinda nice. I'm glad Emacs Reader is aiming to have something similar in the near future. + - dark mode intergration with the dark themes would be cool +- Q: that is a question that I've had for ages - how do we handle that PDFs that (La)TeX generates one page at a time, and that will be broken until the last page is generated... + - using synctex +- Q: I will try to attend one of your streamings... where can I find info about them? + - A: https://tv.dyne.org/c/phimulambda + - we also have an IRC at #phi-mu-lambda you're also welcomed there edrx +- Q: Oh, emacs reader can open epubs? I use nov.el for that, and it has trouble sometimes with complex epubs. + - yup it can :D + - it comes for free with mupdf + - I mean if mupdf supports it, emacs reader will to + - the only thing we don't support is djvu, but i have plans of making it supported in upstream mupdf + - Oh cool, I didn't know about the other formats! + +- [https://codeberg.org/divyaranjan/emacs-reader](https://codeberg.org/divyaranjan/emacs-reader){rel="noreferrer noopener"} + - [https://mupdf.com/](https://mupdf.com/){rel="noreferrer noopener"} + - [https://www.phimulambda.org/blog/emacs-dynamic-module.html](https://www.phimulambda.org/blog/emacs-dynamic-module.html){rel="noreferrer noopener"} + \<\-- that\'s a nice blog post. +- Love this arch diagram step through +- The linked blog for dynamic modules: + [https://www.phimulambda.org/blog/emacs-dynamic-module.html](https://www.phimulambda.org/blog/emacs-dynamic-module.html){rel="noreferrer noopener"} +- You can set the maximum ram usage in Okular settings. If it is + configured to load the entire document scrolling is instant even in + large documents \[not the author: this is only relevant to hugely + beefy machines, surely? And it sounds like the Reader does it + naturally, if you will\] + +- 16GB of RAM goes a long way even for huge documents like technical + datasheets or photo pdfs. Just be careful not to open too many of + them while also having a lot of browser tabs. +- Looks like Reader simply displays the old page until the new one is + ready. While better than showing a white page it\'s not instant like + Okular +- A: Emacs reader doesn\'t require 16GB RAM to do that same, because + it doesn\'t need to cache everything at once, unlike Okular. The + talk shows a video demonstration of it getting stuck when not + configured to use maximum ram (in which it caches the pages.). +- I didn't realize pdf-tools was using so much RAM. + - I definitely noticed, lol + - The memory graphs are already a very compelling point for emacs reader. I will definitely give this a try. + - If you are dealing with large PDFs you *really* feel the difference + - For doc-view yes. For pdf-tools I have noticed it, but very rarely. + - But yeah, it is interesting how much memory it's taking + - I will definitely try this + - pdf tool caches the pages. once you are moving too fast, it is almost as slow as doc view, because it doesn't have it cached anymore +- This look promising! Dealing with PDFs is an important part of the + things I do with Emacs (academic work). Certainly that Pdf-tools was + already a much needed improvement to Doc-View - for example, not + being able to select text was quite an issue. So when you get text + selection and annotations working, I will be certainly looking + forward your library. +- Great talk about emacs-reader. Looking forward to using it. +- Thank you for making this! :-) +- Really tasteful typography on your slides divya + - A: Thank you it's all in Org :) +- I like pdf-tools, but I'm open to trying something new. +- pdf-tools mostly works well, but these points are very much valid +- also have been fairly satisfied with pdf-tools and avoided installation pain because the package manager of choice makes it easy, intrigued by reader and curious to try regardless though +- I've been using emacs-reader for some time - I have packaged it for nix, although I haven't submitted it to nixpkgs in the hope that emacs-reader will one day end up in ELPA/MELPA. https://git.sr.ht/~johnhamelink/nix/tree/master/item/home/modules/emacs/src/epkgs/reader.nix +- Love this arch diagram step through +- Org-noter integration would be very good + - I am also a big org-noter user + - A: I used pdf-tools for several years, indeed I love org-noter as well. certainly a priority integration for us. +- I like the use of diagrams in this talk. It makes it easier to understand. + - I just realized the thread pool has a bunch of "threads" in it! + - That's what those were! I was thinking, "What does 'S' stand for?" +- very impressive work, I'll have to try this later +- Very nice. I'm definitely giving this a try. +- On my OS: MuPDF version 1.19.0 too old. Require ≥ 1.26.0. + - yueah that is a major problem +- Already looks very promising and the upcoming features are likely to make me switch completely from pdf-tools. +- Exciting project! +- very cool! +- Playing with mupdf standalone, epubs look very nice! +- very nice talk. +- great talk divya! great talk indeed! +- Great talk, thank you! +- I'm sold on Emacs Reader. (looking forward to org-noter support) +- fantastic talk! many claps! =) +- Super cool, emacs-reader on the list to try, we'll see if I can get it installed before the ELPA release + +- I'm super excited about this 😊 +- great presentation 👏 +- Great talk about emacs-reader. Looking forward to using it. 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