Re: gpdf/evince in a browser : specifying parameters in a URL

[John Jason Jordan <johnxj comcast net>]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 11:25:42 +0100
"S�stien Ballest�ntich" <sballeste gmail com> dijo:

> On 2007-03-01 23:36:30 +0100, Sven Arvidsson wrote:
> > See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168933 for a bug tracking
> > the development of a browser plugin. You can add a comment there or file
> > it as a separate request.
> 
> On 2007/3/2, Stefano Sabatini <stefano sabatini-lala poste it>:> I don't
> know if it actually works, but it could provide a good
> > starting point (and frankly, I'd prefer a nicely integrated evince
> > plug-in rather than that memory-hog of the acrobat reader plugin).

> 
> Thanks, finally I made a request in the evince/enhancement tracking system.
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168933#c14

When I first installed Ubuntu Hoary amd64 a year and a half ago on this
(then) brand new laptop it installed 64-bit Firefox, and PDF web sites
always opened with Evince. Since then I have upgraded to Breezy,
Dapper, and now Edgy. I also got Adobe Reader 7.08 installed about the
beginning of Dapper, and at that time I also set it up as the plugin
for Firefox. I left it alone, but after upgrading from Dapper to Edgy
it got broken. At first, I couldn't even launch it. Eventually I found
the answer on the Ubuntu forums -- a missing library. But even after
getting it to launch, the menus for Reader in Firefox had squares where
there was supposed to be text, including even the print dialog box. The
font was fine if I just launched it separately. So I decided I did not
want to use it in Firefox any more -- like you, I preferred the much
quicker Evince for the browser. At the same time I was getting tired of
Flash, which I had installed with nspluginwrapper. So I uninstalled
nspluginwrapper and reinstalled mozplugger. Presto! I was back to
Evince. Not only that, but I was finally able to view Powerpoint slides
and Word docs in the browser with OpenOffice, something I had never
been able to get working with nspluginwrapper. And I discovered that,
while mozplugger can't get Flash working in 64-bit Firefox, it does do
so for Opera, which is a 32-bit browser that I had to install with
--force-architecture. So now I have everything just the way I want it
-- Firefox no longer annoys me with Flash junk, but if I want to see
Flash I can do so with Opera. Adobe Reader is now just a standalone app
that I use occasionally when I need to view an editable PDF file.
Firefox opens PDF files with Evince, Powerpoint and Word docs with
OpenOffice, and movies with mplayer, although it launches mplayer
outside of the browser.

Someday someone is going to come up with Smellovision (tm), and we will
be treated to smells so web designers can give us the true feel of a
location. There will be a browser plugin for it, of course, and
everyone will start exclaiming how it enhances the web experience. At
first it will be available only for Internet Explorer because the
Smellovision (tm) people will make a pact with Bill so it can be used
on on Microsoft products. A year or so later the open source community
will hack up a way to get it running in Firefox, Opera, and other
browsers on Linux. I hope by then I am dead.