Evince, the default document viewer on Ubuntu, is adding support for more file formats.
The next stable release, Evince 3.26, due in October, will allow you to view Adobe Illustrator files on Linux without needing to install any additional software.
“But wait!”, I hear you cry, “Evince can already do that!”
This is sort of true; Evince can be made to open Adobe Illustrator files (.ai) on Linux — but the app doesn’t specifically associate itself with these files. What this news, shared today by GNOME developer Bastien Nocera, means is that Evince will declare that it supports .ai files formerly.
So, once installed, you’ll be able to double-click on an .ai file and it will open in Evince without you needing to manually go through and select the app.
This move fixes a bug from 2007 in which a user says: “…this feature needs to be visible, it needs to be clear to users that Adobe Illustrator PDF files (.ai) can be opened in Evince.”
Ten years on and Evince 3.26 will do just that, and will handle both PostScript-based Adobe Illustrator and PDF-based Adobe Illustrator formats.
Evince will open comic book rar’s natively
‘you will no longer have to install the non-free ‘unrar’ package to read comic books on Linux’
Illustrator is not the only file format the trusty document viewer is gaining support for. You’ll also be able to open comic book archive files built with RAR.
Providing more detail Bastien Nocera explains: “…we switched from using external tools for decompression [in Evince] to using lib archive […] for CBZ, CB7 and the infamous CBT, but used a copy/paste version of unarr to support RAR files, as libarchive support lacks some needed features.”
This move means that Evince 3.26 will natively open .cbr files in-app, out-of-the-box, no fuss.
Or, to put it another way, you will no longer have to install the non-free ‘unrar’ package to read your favourite comic books on Linux.
And that gets a thumbs up from me!