Subject: bug#29525: Please don't default to "--unique" mode for Okular

From: Reuben Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2017 18:52:40 +0000

​​Thanks very much to both of you for your feedback.​​

On 1 December 2017 at 21:49, Arash Esbati <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> it is also the default for Yap, dviout, SumatraPDF.  And this is the
> problem with defaults: Never 100% satisfied customers.

The problem in this case is not the default per se (though it is hard to
work out how to configure it: the customize interface for this setting is
overcomplicated), it is that the default is different for different
previewers. The default should (as far as possible) be the same, so that
changing viewers does not change the behaviour.

​Mosè said: "Without this option you'll need to close Okular to view again
(C-c C-v) the document without spawing several instances of the viewer for
the same document.​"

This is not exactly true: once Okular (or Evince) has been spawned, there
is no need to run the View command again: both viewers auto-reload.

​So I would be interested to know for how many viewers it's possible to
have this workflow:

1. Start a new instance of a viewer (C-c C-v).

2. Edit the document and reprocess; auto-reload.

If this is possible in most viewers, I suggest it should be the default
setting.

On the other hand, if most viewers use a single instance model, then single
instance should be the default for all viewers that support it.

For the Customize interface, I'm not sure what to suggest. The current
interface is far too complicated, but if it were made simpler (e.g. to have
a "single instance" toggle) then it would not be so general. But as it
stands it seems very hard to use without reading the source code (which
negates the point of customize).

Arash, you mention editing .emacs; this is a shame. It's not the 1990s any
more: I don't even have a .emacs file, I have .emacs.d/init.el; but more to
the point, the default should be to say "customize foo to bar". To advise
editing .emacs is either a) confusing, b) an admission that Customization
isn't manageable, or c) both.

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