gpdf [Was: 2.3 Proposed Features]

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Martin Kretzschmar">

> So yes, I'd like to make gpdf good enough for inclusion in the
> gnome-desktop release.  But nobody else has replied to your mail on
> desktop-devel-list.

Okay, I've tried it out, and yeah, it's quite a bit nicer (UI-wise, and it
seems, speed-wise) than ggv. A few comments/suggestions:

  * toolbar items are hidden rather than disabled when a document is not
    loaded, would be a bit clearer if this was not the case

  * no indication of which page you're on, and how many there are... Apple's
    "Preview" PDF browser has a page number toolbar entry box (which lets
    you see the current page, and type a page number in to change), and has
    a scrollbar to indicate how far through the document you are (gpdf has a
    scrollbar only for the current page, don't know how hard it would be to
    change that, or if it's worth it... cool that you can scroll through an
    entire document though)

  * maybe a closed-by-default thumbnail sidebar would be good, to thumb
    through pages interactively? don't want to fatten gpdf up too much, but
    this might be worth it

  * doesn't support the recent-files infrastructure from libegg, this is
    gaining popularity in the Desktop apps (see the excellent recent-files
    toolbar drop-down in gedit for a great way of doing this, as well as
    the traditional list in the File menu)

  * there's no smaller 'Fit Width' icon for the View menu

  * gnome-vfs support with an 'Open Location...' item in the File menu would
    be el-neat-o

  * thank you for not putting tabs for multiple documents in there, and for
    implementing drag and drop :-)

  * doesn't add mime stuff, so you can't use it directly from Nautilus on
    install, no entry for it in the 'Other Applications...' dialogue

  * for some reason (and this is the only genuine bug!), my PDFs are
    displayed in the '!Y2KBUG' font. It's the first font on my system
    (alphabetically), thanks to the '!'. Does xpdf not use embedded fonts?
    If not, it ought to default to the system fonts (and perhaps even the
    system aliases for serif, sans-serif, monotype, etc).

All of my PDFs looked great in gpdf (apart from the font), and the user
interface "just works"! :-) Thanks, this is top stuff!

- Jeff

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