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Topic: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans (Read 7254 times)

PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Quote from: ersi on
Can be configured of course.

Please tell me how. I like Evince, but it's been annoying me by having a menu only accessible through F10 or moving the mouse to the top-right corner. It could at least listen to classics like Alt+F but apparently that's too much to ask…

Re: Otter browser and competition

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Quote from: ersi on
Can be configured of course.

Please tell me how.
Sorry. Merely seeing Evince *without* menu bar in Manjaro Openbox and *with* menu bar in Mint Cinnamon, I thought the app *must* be configurable this way, because who in their right mind would make it otherwise? Now, after looking closer, here's a note to myself: Never jump to conclusions with the assumption that anyone in this world is in their right mind. My bad.

However, looks like Evince can be recompiled to incorporate this patch http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=161336 It must be that Mint Cinnamon contains this patch.

I could rephrase my statement this way: Evince can be configured by installing Mint Cinnamon :D

Re: Re: Otter browser and competition

Reply #2 –
I should probably just switch to a different PDF viewer. ePDFView isn't bad, but I prefer Evince's loading multiple pages at once—at least on my proper computer. I like Okular, but I currently don't have any KDE stuff installed. But let's stay on topic. :)

Re: Re: Otter browser and competition

Reply #3 –
Epdfview is not that good. It is the default PDF viewer in Linux Lite that I have installed for someone else and who then complained that PDF files fail to open. It took me a while to understand that it's a different program there, not the same that is on my computer. So I installed Evince on Lite - problem solved.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #4 –
Atril might be an obvious choice. Some people wonder why the MATE project forked most software alongside the DE, but with Gnome's ongoing quest for irrelevance it seems to me that the only question is at what point the fork should occur. For example, when Gnome 3 hadn't yet been released many of the applications such Nautilus, Evince, etc. had been ported to GTK3 without loss of functionality. Of course I'm just looking on from the sidelines, but I wonder why they decided to fork the GTK2 versions instead. However, a fork is an obvious necessity. I understand even the last remaining bastion of usability, gedit, is up for a horrible redesign.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #5 –
Hmm, must be either a gnome thing or something they changed past 3.6.1 ( which is what I happen to have here, with menu bar and gtk3 weirdness )

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #6 –
I know in 3.4 it still had the menubar, probably in 3.6 too. Now in 3.10 it doesn't.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #7 –
The menubar patch I linked to is for Evince 3.10. That's my version too.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I know in 3.4 it still had the menubar, probably in 3.6 too. Now in 3.10 it doesn't.

I'll find out whenever pkgsrc updates it ( and keep the 2.6 package around just in case ). They even keep an evince 2.x package, which is pure gtk2, without all that gtk3 gunk, while using the same PDF renderer ( whatever libpoppler is there when building )

edit: turns out what's in pkgsrc now is 3.10.3 :insane:

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #9 –
Uh oh. :P

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #10 –
Yeah, time for a bulk update. Let's see what breaks this time around ( that's what I get for using something non-x86... ) - at least the 64bit bugs have more or less disappeared.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #11 –
Installed 3.10.3 ... :yuck:
Back to 2.32.0 we go.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #12 –
Today I made a quick live boot into Linux Mint Debian Edition, both Mate desktop and Cinnamon. Mate has Atril as PDF viewer, very good. Cinnamon has Evince with ugly interface, no menus any more :(

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #13 –
Now I found an Evince replacement: Qpdfview. It's built with Qt5 and the specific aim seems to have been to emulate the interface and features of Evince. Naturally, the menus are there in Qpdfview.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #14 –
In Arch User Repository there are packages where the menu is patched/fixed. The packages are called gedit2 and evince2.

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #15 –
Linux Mint team has decided to port some graphical desktop apps, such as text editor, dcument viewer, picture viewer and media player in a bundle called X-Apps and apply these apps across all the desktop flavours that Linux Mint releases, namely Cinnamon, Mate, and Xfce. Thus there's no more Atril for Mate or menu-patched Evince and Gedit for Cinnamon, but apps called xed (text editor), xreader (document viewer), xviewer (picture viewer) and xplayer (media player based on Totem).

The main reason stated for the X-Apps project was this: To better integrate these rather central desktop apps with Mint UI guidelines, as Gnome is increasingly breaking them. Specifically, the menubar. The common feature of all Linux Mint desktop flavours is the menubar, upheld in the guidelines. Thus far Linux Mint released Cinnamon edition with patched Gedit and Evince, now they have xed and xreader (the latter based on Evince) with menubars.

Now all these apps are available in Manjaro Linux too. Manjaro currently has a well-maintained Cinnamon edition which just switched to xapps.

I think the X-Apps project idea is good, but the naming is atrocious.
 

Re: PDF viewers and menu shenanigans

Reply #16 –
Ah, interesting. The GNOME programs are indeed not exactly the easiest to use anymore due to their lack of a menu. I keep clicking all over the place in Evince to find what I want in that program, which used to be a simple matter of looking at the menu. Simply put, the menu exists because I don't necessarily want to become an expert at a program.