[texhax] Better pdf reader?

[Yuri Robbers]

Hi Michael,

On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 17:35 -0400, Michael Barr wrote:
> One of the nice things about dvi previewers is that all the ones I
have 
> seen recently allow you to write a new dvi file without closing the 
> viewer and, better yet, read the new file.  Is there a pdf reader
like 
> that?  As things are, every time you recompile using pdflatex, you
have to 
> close the reader and then rerun it.  What a nuisance!

With Adobe Acorbat Reader you only need to close the document and reopen
it. I know, still a nuisance, but not half as bad as closing and
reopening the entire reader. Taco Hoekwater has written a script (in
bash, I think) that handles all of this automagically. I'll have to look
up the details though.


Apart from that, it depends on your OS. I tend to use UNIX-based OS's
such as Linux, IRIX and Solaris, and I have xpdf, gpdf and Evince
available. Of these, gpdf is like Acrobat Reader: it needs its file
opened and closed.

Both xpdf and Evince have a "refresh" button. For Evince it's in the
"View" menu and has a keyboard shortcut (ctrl-R). For xpdf it's under
the right mousebutton, and has an even simpler keyboard shortcut (R)
than Evince. In addition, xpdf refreshes its file whenever it is brought
back to view after having been minimized (or iconized, depeninding on
your window manager).

All these programs also run under Mac Os X. I'm not sure what options
one would have under windows.

Good luck,
Yuri.