Re: Choosing a .pdf viewer

[John Jason Jordan <johnxj comcast net>]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 09:04:10 -0400
"Donald Allen" <donaldcallen gmail com> dijo:

> I'm running gnome 2.12.3 on an up-to-date gentoo system. I would like to be
> able to choose the default pdf viewer used by Nautilus when I double-click
> on a .pdf file (the current default, the Gnome PDF Viewer, has serious
> rendering and performance problems with certain .pdf files and also doesn't
> appear to offer the ability to search a .pdf file). I have tried
> Settings->File Types and Programs, which I find completely unusable for this
> (and when you click Help->Help with 'File Types and Programs' settings, you
> either get a message saying the help file doesn't exist, or Nautilus
> crashes). For example, in attempting to substitute evince for the default
> .pdf viewer, I click 'pdf document' in the main window. Then I click the
> 'Open with Application' radio button and 'Edit list' in the default action
> section and add evince to the list. Then I select it in the pulldown. Then I
> click 'Ok'. Great. Except this has no effect on Nautilus' choice of a .pdf
> viewer. And if I go back to File Types and Programs and look at the entry
> for 'pdf document' in the main window, the default action is 'none'. It
> would seem like a bug report or two is in order here, which I will do. But
> meanwhile, any suggestions for working around this?

I am using Ubuntu Dapper, amd64 version. It automatically installed
evince as the PDF viewer. However, I wanted Adobe Reader because
sometimes I need to send files to print shops. If it looks right in
Adobe Reader but the print job comes out different, I can lay the blame
on them. But they've usually never heard of evince. We're talking
potentially tens of thousands of dollars. 

After installing Adobe Reader I found that the setup script set it as
the default. If I double-click on a PDF file in Nautilus it opens in
Adobe Reader. Or I can right-click and choose to view it in "Document
viewer," in which case it pops up in a separate window, which turns out
to be evince. The evince window does offer a search function. I usually
use evince because it is simple and fast, unless the document is
complex, or I need to check a document before printing, or I need some
of the additional features of Adobe Reader, e.g., filling in forms.

I've never had to change anything in the File Types and Programs
settings to make this all happen. The only time I made changes was back
when I was using Breezy, and I needed to rearrange certain preferences.
It worked fine then, and I don't know why it's not working for you now.
All I can offer is that if you install Adobe Reader it will set itself
up automatically as the default. Perhaps afterward you can figure out
how it did it, e.g., by dissecting its install script.