Abyssinia Reader

Last Updated: 7^th October, 2025

Important

Abyssinia Reader's major files are uploaded to GitHub on 31^st August 2025. Code are not properly documented yet, guides are rough drafts only. The pre-release version of the Abyssinia Reader is aimed to be published before the end of October, and officially publish the first release before end of November. For more inquiries, please contact me via email (beatrix.chan.dev@proton.me). Please don't open any issues, pull requests, or fork the repository at this state.

Table of Contents

• About
  • Features
• Getting Started
• Extra Information
  • Development Environment
  • Packages
  • Skills Used
  • Tools Used
  • License

About

The name Abyssinia Reader is a direct nod to the Abyssinian cat, emphasizing the unique aspect for this PDF application built with ElectronJS.

Features

• No Ads
• No Subscription Plans
• Completely Open Source
• Basics:
  • Open and read a PDF
  • Highlighters
  • Comment
  • Share PDF
  • Print
  • Signature
  • Stamps
  • Create PDF from images (.png/.jpg/.jpeg/webp)
  • Reorganize/reorder pages
  • Rotate and crop
• Advanced:
  • Extract text (export as .txt)
  • Export as (images)
• Planned:
  • Resize document
  • Support more exporting options (.html, .docx/rtf, etc.)
  • In-app edit text
  • Summarize selected sections
  • Password protections
  • Compare between PDFs
  • Translate document

Getting Started

1. Fork my repository
2. Git clone to your local machine

   git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/abyssinia-reader.git

3. # cd into project directory
   cd abyssinia-reader

4. # Install dependencies
   npm install
   # Start the app
   npm start

Extra Information

Development environment

• miniconda as distributor
  • conda as environment manager
• npm 11.5.2 as package manager
• VSCodium as IDE
  • Cursor light debug
  • Cline (anthropic/claude-sonnet-4) heavy debug
• Prettier as coding style

Packages

Note

You may also check package.json

• @fontawesome/fontawesome-free@7.0.0
• concurrently@9.2.0
• electron@37.3.1
• fabric@6.7.1
• file-type@21.0.0
• html-docx-js@0.3.1
• jspdf@3.0.1
• konva@9.3.22
• mammoth@1.10.0
• pdf-lib@1.17.1
• pdfjs-dist@3.11.174
• sharp@0.34.3
• wait-on@8.0.4

Skills Used

Tools used

License

Abyssinia Reader is an open source PDF reader and editor built with ElectronJS.

Copyright (C) 2025 Beatrix CHAN. All rights reserved.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License or any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses.

Licensed under the GPL 3.0 license.