| From: Patrick Dupre pd520@york.ac.uk
| 90% of the time when I open a pdf file from firefox the document | does not appear in the right window (I mean not in the firefox window, but | in side any window), ie that I do not have any control | on the document position !! | How can it be fixed ?
I find it too. This is very annoying.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456475
Here's what I think is going on (copied from a posting I made to another list).
If you type "evince x.pdf" into a shell, it does what I'd expect: display the file and, when the user dismisses the display, the evince program terminates and the next shell prompt appears.
Do the same again, but don't stop the display. In another shell, evince something else. That second evince command will exit immediately, after passing the request to the first evince. The second file will be displayed but the second command will have quit early.
Another surprise: if the first file display is dismissed, one would expect the first evince command to terminate. It does not do so until all evince windows (including those for other commands) are dismissed.
These are manifestations of an optimization. Optimizations should not produce surprising and undocumented effects but this one does.
Why do I know this? Because Firefox really screws up .pdf displays for me. If I already have evince running for some reason (say, because firefox is showing me another .pdf) and I try to get firefox to show me a .pdf, it will create an undecorated window with the display. This window is out of control: I cannot move it or close it (except by using the File drop down menu which sometimes is off-screen).
evince's behaviour is confusing mozplugger. More magic. https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=20686
(Oh, Firefox isn't innocent: it has a similar optimziation which even reaches across a networked X connection to use a local running firefox even if the command was issued on the far side. Result: files local to the other machine cannot be viewed. At least firefox has a flag to suppress this.)
This evince optimization has eaten several hours of my time. All that diagnosing time has not actually yielded a technique to fix the problem.