vim like navigation on Adobe Acrobat Reader

Question

Adobe Acrobat Reader is currently one of the good pdf readers available on Linux platform. xpdf and evince to their job well, but acrobat's display seems to be better.

I am used to vim editor and I want vim editor navigation features (hjkl) on Adobe Reader. How I do that?

I know evince has hjkl.

Answer 1

As far as I know, this isn't possible. There is a project under way to create a pdf viewer that has a vim-like interface, but although the development seems to be quite active, it has a way to go yet. If that's of any interest, you can find it here (versions are available for Linux and Windows, although the development is focused on Windows):

http://code.google.com/p/apvlv/

Otherwise, I think you're stuck with evince or using the cursor keys.

Answer 2

Sounds like a job for IronAHK!

k::send {up}
j::send {down}
l::send {right}
h::send {left}

I know basic hotkey functionality like this works, but some of the more complex commands are not yet supported with IronAHK.

Answer 3

Meh, this question is one year old, I'll give it a try nevertheless.

Slightly off topic, because I don't know how to do it in acroread, but you might want to try Apvlv:

"Apvlv is a PDF/DJVU/UMD Viewer Under Linux/WIN32 and its behaviour [is] like Vim."

If you're willing to leave acroread, this pdf-reader will give you lots of vim-love.

Apvlv is based on libpoppler (same back-end as evince and now also xpdf), so you might encounter the same display issues that you mentioned. But it certainly fires up more quickly than acroread, which is the slowest in the industry! Good luck.

Disclaimer: I once wrote a piece of documentation for this project.