I Love Evince!

Evince, the Gnome document viewer under Ubuntu 7.10 and up, is simply a great piece of software. It has some simple features which enhance its usefulness for academic work.

Incremental search instead of boring-old-search make evince my favourite viewer for almost any type of document it supports.

The extra feature I use most often is "Open a Copy" in the File menu. This opens up another instance of evince displaying the same file, very useful when you need several different pages of the document open at the same time.

Another useful related feature is, if you click using the middle button while following a PDF link, the link opens up in a new window (just like in Firefox). That way you don't lose the original page.

Of course, evince could be made better. Here's my wish-list:

1. Add a cycle-through-bookmarks feature for the cases when I want quick browsing in one window instead of many
2. Add an "Open a Copy" toolbar button
   
3. The version of evince I'm using on Ubuntu 7.10 doesn't work at all with the print server CUPS; maybe this is already fixed in the newer versions
4. DVI files are blurred (or maybe over-antialiased)
5. We need browser-style back and forward buttons in addition to the page back and page forward buttons, so we can follow links more easily
6. Would be nice to be able to place two arbitrary (not just adjacent) pages side-by-side.
   
7. Alternatively, allow left-right split window with synchronized scrolling made possible (i.e. scrolling one scrolls the other by the same amount)
8. Add a "search for full word only" option to the incremental search
   
9. More when I think of it!

Whizzytex on Ubuntu 7.10

Whizzytex is a pretty nifty application that updates a compiled TeX pane in real-time as you type into emacs. Under Ubuntu 7.10 it comes as a package in the repositories.

With my installation (on a Thinkpad t61) I've had an annoying problem: every few seconds, emacs will freeze completely for a 1-5 seconds (presumably doing a slice compilation or some such thing for whizzytex). This can happen right in the middle of a yank, and it can happen ten times a minute.

Here's my solution, though I can't explain why it works: put the line

(setq whizzy-load-factor 10)

in your .emacs file. The problem still occurs but very occasionally (once in 5-6 minutes, which I can live with). Whizzy is a lot more responsive now as well.

There is one downside: this really increases processor usage. My laptop runs hot and the battery doesn't last long when I have the load factor set high this way.