Supported Document Formats
Evince can support many different multiple and single page document formats. Here is the current list of supported formats.
Built-in Support
Comic Book Archive (.cb7, .cbr, .cbt, and .cbz). Since Evince 42, it requires libarchive.
Device Independent file format (.dvi).
Open XML Paper Specification (.oxps, .xps) using libgxps.
Portable Document Format (.pdf) using Poppler.
PostScript (.ps) using libspectre.
Multi-Page TIFF (.tiff) using libtiff.
Possible or Planned to Support
- MS Powerpoint using libpreview. Currently very rough and alpha-quality.
What about the following? They are probably the most important formats "a document viewer" really should support, however this does not seem to be the plan according to this mail to desktop-devel
- MS Word
OpenOffice.org OpenDocument and other formats
Animated image files would also be nice. I don't think they are supported via gtk-pixbuf. MatthiasClasen: Yes, they are. Check out GdkPixbufAnimation
CHM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compressed_HTML_Help). There is already a python library that could be used: http://gnochm.sourceforge.net/pychm.html It's part of gnochm, a python gnome app to open this types of files. It would be great if evince could use this library to support chm files which are popular for help guides and ebooks.
ShaunMcCance: To anybody who's interested in CHM: It's a terrific fit for Yelp, and we'll gladly include the feature if somebody does the work. It hasn't happened yet because it's nowhere near the top of my priority list, and it probably never will be. Yelp has a nice document abstraction which CHM support should fit easily into. Please email gnome-doc-devel-list if interested. I can certainly help get you started.
JoachimNoreiko: Shaun will probably hate me for saying this, but wouldn't CHM be more logically handled by Yelp?
- The reason I see why support for CHM would be nice in Evince is because there are ebooks around in this format. And Yelp is there to get help with your software - and I don't see that many relevant help files in CHM for Linux software...--Speckmade
BrianCameron: I believe it is possible to call OpenOffice API and tell it to do document conversion. So if evince supports OpenOffice.org format, then you could use OpenOffice to convert MS Word and other documents into OpenOffice format for display. This might be the easiest way to support multiple office formats. It may also be possible to use OpenOffice API to do the rendering of each page.
JanClaeys: if you want to use the OOo-API, wouldn't it be easier and less work to convert everything to PDF instead?
ErnstRohlicek: Is there a possibility of CHM support? Though the format is not the best, a lot of ebooks are available in CHM - currently, I have to install xchm (and along with it the heavy wxGTK) just for viewing those. There is a friendly library available for it, chmlib. Please comment. LucaCavalli: Indeed CHM support was already discussed on Evince mailing list and, sadly, discarded. See http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evince-list/2005-January/msg00020.html and following posts.
JeromeLeclanche: Is there planned support for RTF files? They'd be quite a safe bet on what would fit for a document viewer.