Ubuntu
evince package

Checking for index presence when opening documents

Bug #20520 reported by Trouilliez vincent on 2005-08-29

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	evince (Ubuntu)	Invalid	Wishlist	Sebastien Bacher

Bug Description

I just happened to open a very large (350 pages) PDF, with tons of
chapters/subchapters. However when evince opened the document, it dind't display
the left pane. So I pressed F9 to get it, but then it was set to 'thumbnails'
instead of 'index', which is useless in this case, so I had to correct this as well.
Would be nice if evince could check for the presence of an index, and if there
is one, display the left pane and set it to 'index', not 'thumbnails'.

Revision history for this message

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote on 2005-09-01:

That's an user setting, some people prefer the previews, other the index. I'm
closing as NOTABUG, feel free to reopen if you disagree

Revision history for this message

Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet) wrote on 2005-09-01:

> That's an user setting,

I can't see any setting that allow me to chose either view. I can' teven see any
"preferences" dialog to start with !
It could at least remember the last setting that was used, but it doesn't even
do that, as I keep having to select index all the time.

> some people prefer the previews, other the index.

Browsing a 350 page book with thumbnails ? I think I am lost ! :-/

Revision history for this message

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote on 2005-09-01:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152659 upstream is about keeping the
setting. For the mode, that's not because you don't use something that other
people have the same usecase, your comments that tend to deny usecase of other
people have a goal?

Revision history for this message

Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet) wrote on 2005-09-01:

(In reply to comment #3)
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152659 upstream is about keeping the
> setting.

I clicked on this link but the bug there is hardly relevant to evince it seems...

> For the mode, that's not because you don't use something

Hold on, of course I use the thumnail view, when it is APPROPRIATE, that is when
viewing document that have a dozen pages or so.

> that other people have the same usecase,
> your comments that tend to deny usecase of other
> people have a goal?

Are you really trying to tell me that if you have to navigate in a 350 datasheet
(which is what I have to do right now), you (or anyone) can (would sanely want
to) do it using thumbnails instead of the index ?!! Show me. No please don't,
you have more interesting/urgent to do on Breezy I am sure.
Of course I am not denying any use case. But here I think it's not about use
case or user preference, it's just about plain common sense. On a same level,
what if Yelp had no index and all help pages were merged, and you had to check
thousands of pages one by one until you find the 2 lines of help you were
looking for ? This what you telling me ! :-/
Anyway, I don't care how others navigate large documents, however it would be
nice if we had an option to make evince behave the way the user would like it to
behave. In my (and only mine it seems) case, I would set it to display
thumbnails by default, unless the documents contains an index and counts more
than X (say 20, or make that configurable) pages. Even if it's hidden in Gconf.