[texworks] Wishlist for pdf previewer

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2011-10-31 at 20:35:04 +0100, Stefan Löffler wrote:

 > Hi,
 > 
 > On 2011-09-25 00:14, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 > > First of all, I think that a multipage view is quite useful in order
 > > to check whether right-hand pages have odd numbers (or even numbers in
 > > Arabic or Hebrew documents), but I never understood what continuous
 > > view is good for.  I find it rather anoying when PDF files turn it on.
 > 
 > I guess that depends on your way of work, and the files you're working
 > on. Personally, what I dislike about single page view is the abruptness
 > when I go from one page to the next. Of course this doesn't apply to
 > presentations.
 > But all in all, I guess it's a matter of taste, so both single page and
 > continuous modes should be supported.
 > 
 > > I agree on what Phil Taylor already said about marquee zoom.  That's
 > > what I'm using in Adobe Reader quite frequently.
 > 
 > Marquee zoom has already been implemented and works quite well (up to
 > "insane" magnifications of several 10000%).

Hi Stefan,
with rev. 943 I get at most 800%.  Is there anything I have to
configure?
 
 > >  * A frame should be drawn around the magnifying glass.  I discussed
 > >    this with Jonathan already in The Hague but he had not enough time
 > >    to implement it himself.
 > 
 > This is implemented.

I don't see it here.  Hmmm.  I ran

  svn up
  make distclean
  qmake
  make

 > >  * The magnified area should make use of the entire window, ATM it's
 > >    clipped at page boundaries, even if the window is larger than a
 > >    sheet.  But this is a minor issue, I don't know how difficult it is
 > >    to implement.
 > 
 > I looked into it a while ago, but it doesn't seem to be straight forward
 > with Qt, owing to the fundamental differences of window management
 > across platforms.
 > 
 > >  * If the magnifying glass is configured to have a rectangular shape,
 > >    it would be nice if there are configurable rulers attached to its
 > >    borders.  This was implemented in xdvi already.
 > 
 > Would a measurement tool work as well? For starters, this could be as
 > simple as showing the cursor coordinates somewhere in the status bar,
 > but could be extended to measure, e.g., the length or angles of lines.
 > Rulers should be doable as well, but their implementation is probably
 > not straight-forward when in continuous mode (as different pages may
 > have different sizes and orientations) and possibly not very helpful on
 > some cases (e.g., when wanting to measure something in the center of the
 > page).

Yes, a measurement tool would be fine.  And with marquee zoom you get
a quite good resolution.  gv is showing the cursor coordinates already
but what I'm missing there is to be able to change the origin and the
unit of measure.

 > >  * The magnifying glass should work with a marquee-zoomed image as
 > >    well.
 > 
 > Of course it does. Marquee zooming is no different from "normal"
 > zooming, you only specify the final zoom level and center point
 > differently. So only your poppler implementation is the limit ;).

Great!  Works like a charm!

Stefan, I fully second your decision to drop Python.  I asked for
scripting support from the beginning.  But I still don't see the need
to support zillions of scripting languages.  I proposed Lua because
it's easy to learn and more portable than anything else since there is
LuaTeX.  I also think that people learn Lua in order to have more fun
with LuaTeX.  But if QtScript already provides a lot of things which
have to be ported to Lua, I would also be happy with QtScript.

You are already doing so much, I don't think you have to do everything.
On the other hand, if one complains quite unpolitely while the rest of
the world honors your work, you can just ignore him.

Regards and thank you,
  Reinhard

-- 
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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
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Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
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