PDFOPEN(1) PDFOPEN(1)
NAME
pdfopen, pdfclose - open or close a PDF file viewer
SYNOPSIS
pdfopen [ options ] [ --file ] file.pdf
pdfclose [ --file ] file.pdf
OPTIONS
-h, --help, -?
output help and exit.
-v, --version, -V
output the version number and exit.
-p <n>, --page <n>
when starting the viewer, display page <n> of the document
(notes: not all viewers support this feature, and even in those
cases this option only has effect when the document is initially
loaded). This option is over-ridden by -g.
-g <named destination>, --goto <named destination>
when starting the viewer, display the page of the document con-
taining the named destination (notes: not all viewers support
this feature, and even in those cases this option only has ef-
fect when the document is initially loaded).
-r, --reset_focus
after sending commands to the PDF viewer, attempt to reset the
input focus to the window which had focus before the commands
were sent.
-viewer, --viewer <ar9|ar9-tab|ar8|ar7|ar5|xpdf|evince>
use (respectively) Adobe Reader 9 (in a new window), Adobe
Reader 9 (in a new tab of a running AR9, if any), Adobe Reader
8, Adobe Reader 7, Adobe Reader 5, xpdf or evince as the PDF
viewer program. Adobe Reader 9 (in a new window) is the de-
fault.
RATIONALE
At certain points of TeX document preparation, many people repeat a
"edit-compile-view" cycle. Since PDF viewers such as Adobe's Acrobat
Reader ("acroread") do not automatically refresh the display when the
PDF file changes, this cycle can be more cumbersome than desired. The
pdfopen program provides the ability to automate the reloading of the
PDF document when it is changed.
Note: there seems to be little need for pdfclose under GNU/Linux, since
(unlike the situation for MS windows) acroread does not lock the PDF
file, which would prevent pdftex (or a DVI to PDF converter) from creat-
ing a new version of the PDF output file. However, pdfclose is provided
in case someone finds it useful.
DESCRIPTION
pdfopen searches for an instance of the specified (or default) PDF
viewer displaying the specified PDF file. If there is already an in-
stance of the given viewer displaying the given file, the viewer is in-
structed to reload the file. If no such instance is found, pdfopen at-
tempts to run the specified viewer on the specified document.
The default viewer is "acroread", which could start any one of a number
of versions of Acrobat Reader, depending on what is installed on your
system. However, the commands to reload the current document vary from
one version of acroread to another; consequently, if you are using a
version of acroread other than AR9, you should explicitly specify the
viewer program.
This version of pdfopen accepts the following viewer options:
ar9, ar9-tab, ar8, ar7, ar5, xpdf, and evince.
The difference between ar9 and ar9-tab is significant when there is no
instance of AR9 already displaying the requested document. In this sit-
uation, while ar9 will request acroread to create a new instance of
acroread (and thus open a new window) by using the -openInNewInstance
argument, ar9-tab starts acroread without this argument; if there is al-
ready an instance of acroread running, a new tab will be opened in an
existing window.
pdfclose searches for one of the above PDF viewers displaying the given
file and instructs the viewer to "close" the window. In most cases, the
PDF viewer continues to run, possibly now displaying just a blank win-
dow. (This behaviour varies somewhat from one PDF viewer to another.)
PORTABILITY AND AVAILABILITY
These programs have been tested on Slackware64 Version 14.1 and a few
other versions / distributions of GNU/Linux. The code is reasonably
generic and should work out of the box using most recent X11 implementa-
tions. (Reports to the contrary are welcome, particularly if they come
with robust fixes.)
These programs are designed for X11-based systems. If you somehow find
compiled versions of these programs on a system using another window
system, they are very unlikely to be of any use to you.
Source and binaries of the programs can be downloaded from CTAN://sup-
port/xpdfopen/ (e.g., http://mirror.ctan.org/support/xpdfopen).
CAVEATS
If you use ar9-tab to reload the PDF document and the instance of
acroread with the given document is currently displaying some other doc-
ument, the command causes your document to be displayed, but not re-
loaded.
pdfopen works by looking for a window with a name (window title) match-
ing that expected for the given viewer and document. If for some reason
your viewer's window name is not as expected, pdfopen may not work for
you.
With at least AR9 and some window managers, using pdfopen to reload the
document gives focus to the acroread window, even though the mouse cur-
sor is not necessarily in that window. This can be annoying. The -re-
set_focus option can be used to deal with this problem.
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Jim Diamond <Jim.Diamond@acadiau.ca>. I
am the current maintainer of the X11 versions of pdfopen and pdfclose.
Report any bugs you find to me. Feature enhancement requests are wel-
come, coded enhancements even more so.
Past authors: Fabrice Popineau wrote the MS-windows versions of pdfopen
and pdfclose upon which these programs were originally based. Taco
Hoekwater created the GNU/Linux versions, up to Version 0.61 (including
some documentation which inspired parts of this man page). Peter Breit-
enlohner has contributed both code and suggestions to versions later
than 0.61.
pdfopen 0.86 2014-05-24 PDFOPEN(1)
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