Methodox Reader
Methodox Reader is a PDF and EPUB reader, editor and annotation tool for Windows, Linux and macOS. It opens a document, reads it, searches it, marks it up, fills in its forms, 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 own document libraries, so there is no native PDF or EPUB component dependency.
- Version: v0.3
- Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS
- Download: Methodox.itch.io
Two formats
Methodox Reader opens PDF files and EPUB books. They are different kinds of document and the interface says so: menus and tools are built from what the open format can do, so an action that cannot work is not shown at all rather than shown greyed out.
| EPUB | ||
|---|---|---|
| Reading, zoom, thumbnails | Yes | Yes |
| Contents and outline | Yes | Yes |
| Search, with hits marked on the page | Yes | Yes |
| Printing and image export | Yes | Yes |
| Selecting and copying text | Yes | — |
| Highlights, notes, drawings | Yes | — |
| Rotating, deleting and reordering pages | Yes | — |
| Filling in forms | Yes | — |
| Merging | Yes | — |
| Saving | Yes | — |
| Choosing the page and text size | — | Yes |
The reason is the formats themselves rather than any missing work here. An EPUB has no way to store an annotation — the format has nowhere to put a highlight, and readers that offer to annotate a book keep the marks in a file of their own, separately from the book. And an EPUB has no pages until something lays it out, so rotating page 7 of a book is not a thing that can be asked of the file.
What a book has instead is View ▸ Page setup, which chooses the page size, the text size, and whether the publisher's own styling is used. Changing any of them lays the book out again and changes how many pages it has, which is why it is a deliberate choice rather than something that happens while you scroll.
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.
Pages that have been rendered are kept, so turning back to something you have already read is instant rather than a re-render, and the pages just off screen are prepared before you reach them.
The sidebar carries three ways of getting around a long document: a rail of page thumbnails, the document's own outline, bookmarks or table of contents 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.
Search can be set to match case or to match whole words only. Changing either runs the search again straight away.
Text in a PDF can be selected with the mouse and copied with Ctrl+C, and a selection may run across a page break, so a paragraph split over two pages copies as one paragraph. Right-clicking a selection offers to copy or highlight it.
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.
A mark already made can be changed. Selecting one with the Select tool gives it handles: drag the middle to move it, drag a handle to resize it, and the strip above the page offers its colour, its text and Del to remove it. A highlight spanning a page break becomes one mark per page, which is how every other reader stores it and what lets each be removed on its own.
Forms
A PDF with interactive form fields shows them tinted on the page. Clicking a text field opens a box to type in, a choice field offers its list, and a check box or radio button toggles on the spot. Fields the document has locked are shown differently and cannot be edited. Buttons such as Submit or Clear Data are recognised as commands rather than treated as fields with a value; their actions are not run.
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
--page <n> opens the document at a page rather than at the beginning.
--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, 12 the contents. 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, and four-component (CMYK) JPEG. Scanned documents, which use CCITT fax, do open.
- Encrypted PDFs open when the password is empty or supplied (RC4 40/128-bit, AES-128, AES-256), and are written back unencrypted.
- Dynamic XFA forms — an Adobe extension used by some government and banking forms — cannot be displayed by anything but Adobe Acrobat. Methodox Reader recognises one and says so, rather than showing the "Please wait…" placeholder such a file contains.
- Text in an EPUB cannot yet be selected or copied.
Changelog
v0.3 — books, and editing what you have marked. EPUB books open alongside PDFs, with reading, contents, search, printing and image export. Annotations can be moved, resized, recoloured and retyped rather than only made and deleted. PDF forms can be filled in. Scanned documents render, where before they opened as blank pages. Text selection runs across page breaks, and search gained match-case and whole-word. A recent-documents list, working keyboard shortcuts, a right-click menu on the page, and an open dialog that remembers where it was.
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.