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I'm searching for a good, simple PDF viewer without javascript support. This link says that Evince does not have javascript support but may in future.

I want a PDF viewer that has no javascript support now and in thefuture. Is Atril the MATE default PDF viewer a good choice? The reason I want this is to avoid PDF JavaScript exploits.

fosslinux
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c0rv0
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2 Answers2

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According to packages.ubuntu.com, Atril depends indirectly on a Javascript library (atril>libatrilview3>libwebkit2gtk>libjavascriptcoregtk). So no, I'd say Atril is not what you're looking for.

Mike Kupfer
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While Kupfer is right that Atril uses a JavaScript library, that doesn't actually mean that it executes JavaScript included in a PDF file.

You can see in this bug report for the Evince project (which Atril forked from) that JavaScript support has been discussed but has not been added.

As far as Atril JS support goes, the only thing I've found is a PDF rendering library also called "atril." It doesn't seem to be related. So you shouldn't have to worry about rogue JavaScript in your PDFs using either Atril or Evince.

Finally, I personally have been using Firefox as my PDF viewer. I've also recently disabled JavaScript execution; I read some PDFs from small personal websites and would rather not let my reading habits become a backdoor (though that may have already happened, actually).

I originally followed the instructions in this tutorial, but here they are in short form:

Enter about:config into the URL bar >>> Search for the pdfjs.enableScripting setting >> click the double-arrow symbol to the right of the setting to switch it to "false."

Rain Reinoehl
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