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

From: Reuben Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2017 09:26:02 +0000

On 3 December 2017 at 01:13, Mosè Giordano <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that the issue you
> raised is sensible but the best solution would be to fix first
> upstream in Okular.  It'd be a good improvement.  After that, I'll be
> more than happy to remove the --unique option.
>

I agree that okular should be able to do this.

If you are working with many documents at the same time (say 3-4 or
> even more) switching between Emacs and the wanted document can be
> really annoying, using C-c C-v brings to focus the right instance of
> the viewer.  This is what Evince does and is much more convenient.
>

I agree, but this is a problem to solve with the window manager, not the
application behaviour.

Sometimes, this behaviour of Evince is annoying, because it means I can't
have two views of the same documents (as I can in Emacs, ironically!).

> Please, there is no need to put shame on anyone.
>

​I apologise, I think this was misinterpreted. When in English we say
something is "a shame", this does not mean that anyone should necessarily
"be ashamed".

Well, he did suggest you to customize `TeX-view-program-list', *and*
> provided you, as a possibility, with two lines of code to add to your
> init file to accomplish the same task.  It's up to you to decide
> what's best for you.  I really don't see what's the problem here.
>

​The problem is that this attitude is still common with Emacs package
developers, and it hurts users, especially naive users. We should only talk
about customizing. Because of this "two ways to do it" attitude we have
these problems:

1. Newer users are confused. "Should I use customize or edit .emacs
[whatever that is]?"​ No wonder Emacs seems confusing and complicated.

2. We provide inadequate, incomplete or poor-quality customize interfaces
(as in the present case) because "well, the user can always edit .emacs
instead".

In other programs with a user-editable configuration file, editing the
configuration file is a last resort, when there is something that cannot be
configured in the preferences dialog, or a bug in the program. This should
be true in Emacs too, for all users: customize should be easy for newer
users and convenient for advanced users.

Thanks again. At least, as you observed at the start, what I want is
possible. However, had I not been an Emacs Lisp programmer, I would have
had to ask an expert just to achieve this simple change.

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