[texhax] Better pdf reader?

Steve Schwartz s.schwartz at imperial.ac.uk
Sun May 7 01:31:46 CEST 2006


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!

I use xpdf (under Linux, ...) for previewing my pdflatex files. After
compiling a changed version of the .tex file with pdflatex, striking the
"r" key with xpdf the active window will reload the pdf file to the same
place (i.e., page number I think) and the same magnification. I don't
know if there is something similar for a MSWindows PC [I guess for a mac
there must be a version of xpdf that runs under OsX or something else
within the mac to do this, as my understanding is that the mac windowing
system is native pdf]

With acrobat reader, the best you can do is Ctrl-w (to close the
document but leave the reader open) followed by Alt-f (to pull down the
File menu) then 1 (to open the most recent file). This isn't nearly as
good as the xpdf solution, because it will reopen to page 1 and default
magnification, but is better than quitting the reader and restarting it.

Ghostview will also reload a document to the same page and
magnification. This might be a decent alternative.

Steve

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Professor Steven J Schwartz      Phone: +44-(0)20-7594-7660
Space and Atmospheric Physics    Fax:   +44-(0)20-7594-7772
The Blackett Laboratory          E-mail: s.schwartz at imperial.ac.uk
Imperial College London          Office: Huxley 6M70 
London SW7 2BW, U.K.             Web: http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~sjs
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+




More information about the texhax mailing list