Sioyek

Research papers are something that students are all too familiar with, whether they like it or not. The software of choice to write one's research papers on is usually Microsoft Word, or some similar mainstream solution. When all is said and done, the document is exported in .PDF to ensure no funny business happens with compatibility.

How does one view those PDF documents, then? Generalist PDF viewers are many, so it's interesting to see a custom-developed solution for reading technical books and research papers. Sioyek is that solution, essentially, and it is intuitive, minimalist, and easy to manage, thanks to the numerous hotkeys that quickly allow users to focus on what they need.

Operating the software most efficiently is done through a set of hotkeys: these help users inspect their documents and navigate through them more efficiently, and a tutorial file is instantly opened when first booting up the tool. A lot of the hotkeys are intuitively mapped, and if you're ever unsure whether you've pressed the correct one, it's not a bad idea to have the tutorial PDF at the ready.

You can open a new document by pressing the "O" hotkey, and you can add multiple documents to the queue, and cycle between them by pressing the CTRL+left/right arrow keys combination. You can toggle dark mode via F8, and opening the table of contents of a paper is done through the "T" hotkey. Pressing "/" enables the search function.

A handy functionality for inspecting research papers comes in the form of the Marks feature: set a mark to a passage, and come back to it anytime via the "`" hotkey.

To further that, the Google Scholar and Library Genesis integration is especially useful in the context of research papers and technical documents. Pressing the "SS" hotkey on a highlighted passage will trigger a Google Scholar lookup, while the "SL" shortcut will use Library Genesis for the search. This can be very useful when checking for plagiarism, or when you just want to inspect the source text a bit more closely.

Sioyek is the kind of niche tool that some users could get a lot of use out of, so those dabbling in research papers are sure to appreciate the intuitive and focused design. As for other users, your mileage may vary: this can get you by as a default PDF viewer of sorts, but when compared to Adobe's offering, or other such generalist tools, it will start to feel lacking.