Methodox Reader

Methodox Reader is a PDF reader, editor and annotation tool for Windows, Linux and macOS. It opens a document, reads it, searches it, marks it up, reorganises its pages, merges it with others, exports it as images and prints it — and writes the result back as an ordinary PDF that any other reader can open.

It is built on Divooka's GUI framework (LeanGUI) and Divooka's PDF library, so there is no native PDF component dependency.

Version: v0.2
Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS
Download: Methodox.itch.io

Reading

The document scrolls continuously from the first page to the last. Zoom is fit-width, fit-page, or any level you set yourself, and pages render in the background — the view keeps showing what it already has while the next page arrives, so scrolling and zooming never leave you looking at a blank rectangle.

The sidebar carries three ways of getting around a long document: a rail of page thumbnails, the document's own outline or bookmarks where it has them, and a comments panel listing the annotations in the file. Ctrl+B hides the sidebar when you want the page to have the window to itself. There is a light theme and a dark one.

Search and text selection

Search runs over the whole document at once. Each hit is listed with the text around it, so you can tell the right one from the wrong one before jumping, and every hit is also marked on the page itself.

Text on a page can be selected with the mouse and copied with Ctrl+C. A selection covers one page at a time.

Markup

Four tools put marks on a page:

Highlight — select text, then highlight it.
Sticky note — a note placed at a point on the page, opened by clicking it.
Ink — freehand drawing.
Rectangle — a box drawn around something.

A colour picker offers five inks. Each mark is a standard PDF annotation, complete with its own appearance, so it survives a save and displays the same way in other PDF readers rather than only in this one. Del removes the selected annotation.

Pages

The page organiser shows every page in the document at once. Click to select a page, Ctrl-click to add another, and Shift-click to take a run of them. With a selection made you can rotate left or right, delete, or extract the selected pages to a new PDF, leaving the original untouched.

Merging

Several PDFs can be combined into one in an order you choose. The list shows each file's page count, so the shape of the result is clear before it is produced.

Exporting as images

Pages can be written out as PNG, JPEG, BMP, TGA or QOI at a resolution you set, with or without annotations. Exporting without annotations gives you the page as its author left it; exporting with them gives you the page as you have marked it up.

Printing

Printing covers page ranges, number of copies, paper size, scaling, several pages to a sheet, and whether annotations are included. The job is prepared by Methodox Reader and handed to the system's printing service. A print to file option writes exactly what would have gone to the printer, which is useful for checking a layout, or for a machine with no printer attached.

Keyboard and mouse

Action	Binding
Open / Save / Print	`Ctrl`+`O` / `Ctrl`+`S` / `Ctrl`+`P`
Copy selected text	`Ctrl`+`C`
Toggle the sidebar	`Ctrl`+`B`
Delete the selected annotation	`Del`
Scroll	Arrow keys, `Page Up`/`Page Down`, `Home`, `End`
Zoom	`Ctrl` + mouse wheel
Pan	Middle-drag, `Shift`-drag, or the Pan tool
Clear a selection	`Esc`

Command line

MethodoxReader document.pdf                # open a file
MethodoxReader document.pdf --dark         # start in the dark theme
MethodoxReader document.pdf --headless 4   # open straight onto a screen

--headless <n> opens the application directly on a named screen instead of the reader: 2 markup, 3 pages, 4 print, 5 merge, 6 export, 7 search, 8 about. It saves clicking your way to a screen when demonstrating a feature or taking screenshots under a script.

Limitations

A few uncommon image codecs inside PDFs are not decoded and are skipped: JPEG 2000 (JPX), JBIG2, CCITT fax, and four-component (CMYK) JPEG.
Encrypted PDFs open when the password is empty or supplied (RC4 40/128-bit, AES-128, AES-256), and are written back unencrypted.
Text selection works within a single page at a time.

Changelog

v0.2 — first release. Reading with continuous scroll, zoom, thumbnails, outline and comments; document-wide search; text selection and copying; highlight, sticky note, ink and rectangle annotations; the page organiser; merging; image export; printing; light and dark themes.

v0.1 — initial draft. Not released. The interface was designed first as mockups, followed by a first working shell, to prove the design was buildable.