Re: Gnome DVI viewer?

[tim maths tcd ie]

> Well, one thing: aesthetics. The Athena widget set is just plain ugly
> and doesn't fit terrible well in with the rest of the desktop. And it
> is counter-intuitive too, at least for anyone used to modern GUIs
> (however because of xdvi's limited graphical interface, the latter
> isn't really a problem).

Isn't it possible to design a module which allows external programs
(like xdvi) to be integrated into gnome?

> Since Nautilus is going to be the all-round viewer, someone will
> probably at some point write a component for it for viewing DVIs. That
> would be the logical solution, IMHO.

It may be logical but it is also dangerous.
There are many subtle points that arise with xdvi,
eg incorporation of PS and other graphics,
as will be clear to anyone who scans comp.text.tex .
In my opinion you are very unlikely to get anyone
to maintain a rival dvi reader
to the same level of competence as Paul Vojta does with xdvi.

Incidentally, the same issue arises with many other applications.
I recently switched to GNOME from KDE (when upgrading to RedHat-7.0).
In KDE I had endless problems with kppp,
and found it far easier to use the standard pppd.
It seemed to me it would have been far better
just to add a simple KDE wrapper around pppd
rather than trying to be clever, as kppp (in my view) did.