Re: Evince as universal "Viewer"

[Pat Suwalski <pat suwalski net>]

Thom Holwerda wrote:
> I am a proponent of having an "uber image viewer" because it greatly
> improves ease-of-use and consistency; as users are presented with the
> same interface whether they open a .jpg, .png, or .pdf. Barely anyone
> edits .pdf files, so I guess that that's the reasoning by Apple to
> integrate pdf viewing into the image viewer application.

There is, however, a very, very large drawback.

Right now, Evince is to eventually replace gpdf and ggv. That's okay,
but what if it also did replace eog? Then when you have such a large
application, what can ever replace it? It becomes a behemoth of a
component that can never be removed, is hard to modify, etc.

Right now, if (for example) the release team wanted to exchange eog for
gthumb, it would be completely possible without duplication of features
and minimal headaches.

I've always understood the Gnome usability guidelines as "one program
for one task" (I'm paraphrasing here). Same as "no MDI; one window for
oen document."

Perhaps it works in OSX because they treat PDFs as images rather than
documents. After all, even screenshots are PDFs.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I would hate for it to be integrated like
that, if only because eog starts up really, really quickly; adding
anything more to it would make it slow.

That's just my point of view on application conglomeration.

--Pat