Viewing DjVu Documents On OS X
November 26, 2016
Today I downloaded a DjVu document to my Mac Mini running OS X El Capitan. I was expecting to be able to view such a document on OS X without having to install any 3rd party software. Alas, the document format was not supported.
After some research I came upon a reply to a request for a convenient and reliable DjVu reader on the Software Recommendations community of Stack Exchange. The comment recommended the gratis program DjView:
Of all (scarce) DJVU viewing software for OSX i so far find DJView the most feature rich among gratis software.
The reply had a 2016 update recommending the Qt5-based builds of DjView.
As I already
had
Mac Ports installed
on my Mac Mini I decided to check out first if I could install DjView
using the port command.
$ port search djview
Warning: port definitions are more than two weeks old, consider updating them by
running 'port selfupdate'.
djview @4.10.6 (aqua, graphics, www)
DjVu files viewer.
djview-qt5 @4.10.6 (aqua, graphics, www)
DjVu files viewer.
Found 2 ports.
A Qt5-based build of DjView was indeed available, but I decided to update first the port definitions as recommended above:
$ sudo port selfupdate
Password:
---> Updating MacPorts base sources using rsync
MacPorts base version 2.3.4 installed,
MacPorts base version 2.3.5 downloaded.
---> Updating the ports tree
---> MacPorts base is outdated, installing new version 2.3.5
Installing new MacPorts release in /opt/local as root:admin; permissions 0755
:
:
:
---> Updating database of binaries
---> Scanning binaries for linking errors
---> No broken files found.
After the port definitions had been updated I installed the DjView program as follows:
sudo port install djview-qt5
After the port installation ended I opened the DjVu file via the
Finder and it just worked. The DjView program also shows up in
LaunchPad.