[texworks] Open File from previewer

[Paul A Norman]

Hi,

I'd like to support what Stefan has said, these sorts of issues of
User expectation in interfaces like file open dialogues are very
complex and hard to find a balance in.

Why not just add .pdf to your personal filter along with .tex if you
won't mind seeing, or find it confusing to see, all your .tex and .pdf
that may be in that directory?

For people who do not use a separate images directory or other
structure, that may be confusing.

It may surprise some to think that it is not obvious that a pdf viewer
would have .tex in the top area of the dropdown as per the actual .tex
editor, but in fact the primary purpose of TeXworks is to edit .tex
files and shell out to produce output.

So if a .pdf is the product of a .tex, then opening the .tex will open
the .pdf at the same time anyway.

There may be some people who may use the pdf previewer as a general
purpose previewer for all and any .pdf files, but generally most
people's systems would be more than likely to have some other pdf
viewer set as the default for viewing .pdf, and they would generally
look to that application for viewing non-TeXworks pdfs, even if they
were thinking to include a .pdf in TeXworks.

I know there may be a number of people now come forward and say that
they view all their .pdf in TeXworks previewer -- but my guess - and
that is all it is, would be that would tend to be exceptional
behaviour for people who all their `computer life' have been looking
at .pdf-s before they came onto TeXworks anyway.

I don't want to create a contention, just to suggest that TeXworks is
perhaps best viewed as a .tex editor first before anything else, and
realise that someone else may have a stronger more compelling
argument.

I have been working on a scripted dialogue for previewing, converting,
adapting and making minor alterations to images and inserting them
(and .pdf) for use as graphics in a .tex document, but it is not fully
ready yet. I can coax it along for myself, but there are memory issues
for directories with large numbers of images in them, and cross-OS
issues with ImageMagick and permissions.

Paul

On 11 December 2011 07:29, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2011-11-18 12:00, Ignasi Furió wrote:
>> today I've discovered that File->Open from Texworks preview shows
>> *.tex in File Type selector.
>> It surprised me because I was expecting for a *.pdf list of files. Is
>> it intended?
>
> Yes and no.
> Right now, there is one, central "open" function, which is invoked from
> the editor and the previewer alike (and, on the Mac, from the global
> menu when no window is open). As such, there is no (easy) way to change
> the list of file types.
>
> In addition, what about the following situation: a user edits one file
> of a multi-file document. He typesets it. He is satisfied with what he
> sees and wants to move to the next file. To do that, he hits Ctrl+O (or
> uses the global menu on Mac or on Ubuntu) and instead of the possibility
> to open the tex file, it displays only pdfs.
>
> So, the bottom line is, we can't know for sure what the user wants in
> this situation. So for now, I'm somewhat inclined to leave it they way
> it is...
>
> Regards,
> Stefan