bitch about xpdf

[sledgehammer]

Xpdf is my pdf viewer of choice.  Seamonkey is my browser.  I use Vl6.0.  I regularly look at pdf files online and then download the file to my hard drive. Kpdf won't open some of them.  Acroread, at least the version on the repository, is far too finicky. In fact I had to remove it as Seamonkey kept defaulting to it. gv doesn't open some of them and is hard to read when it does. Kghostview doesn't open a lot of them. Evince is pretty good, but slow.  xpdf beats them all, hands down.

But once opened, saving in xpdf is, for me at least, often a nightmare. About half the time I end up saving it to desktop and then moving it to the proper place on my hard drive. A wasteful, two-step process.

Does anyone know how to train xpdf to give a little index which would allow one to quickly choose folders in my home/documents directory in which to save?  It seems to retain the last folder used every once in a while, but all too often it quicky defaults to /tmp.

Thanks

[Windozer]

Hey Sledge,

I feel your pain - and wish I had an answer.  This is a tangental rant ...

I rarely say things like this, but I actually do *hate* PDF files 

Feels like a conspiricy that they became the 'document standard' for the web and everywhere else... sure, it was the first to plate for a complex document solution. Still, I wish the open source community had been further along back then - we might have had an alternative.

Well, the problem is less the PDF format as it is those dang reader thingies. Searching with Adobe reader on winduds is like waiting at the dentist for the drill to hit.  And it's version what, 9 now?  I'll bet it's still dang slow at v15.

xpdf is a real PITA ... I'm sad to say that if I have to deal with more than a few PDFs in one session, I reboot in winders. In fact, here I am precisely because I was looking for help on xpdf  :-|

Well, if nothing else, at least we can cry on each other's shoulders over this sad state of documentary affairs!   

- Howard

[kidd]

I use xpdf because I just gets the job done.  I rarely need to save them (if I marked it only for opening in firefox, I just redownload it, or find it in /tmp ) .

If you want a pdf reader that sucks less, you can try foxit reader through wine.

xpdf understands j and k as down and up keys (à la vim).  That's a killer feature for me that no other pdf reader has

[flip city]

Hi John,
 when you open a pdf document with xpdf, right mouse clicking on that opened document, offers you to save to various folders. Is this what you're after ?

[Pita]

Hi John,
 when you open a pdf document with xpdf, right mouse clicking on that opened document, offers you to save to various folders. Is this what you're after ?

That will only work with stand-alone xpdf not with embedded in browser.

I recommend to use the 'File>Safe page as' option of the browser.

I like the feature of embedded xpdf to remmember where to safe. Mine has never
jumped to /tmp in opera or firefox.

[Pita]

I recommend to use the 'File>Safe page as' option of the browser.

That's bloody nonesense!

[sledgehammer]

What I've ended up doing is this:

1.  Use evince to open a pdf offered on the internet (opens slower but overall faster as evince allows an easy save).

2.  After document is on my hard drive, read it with xpdf, unless its complicated, and then with kpdf (works most of the time).

[Pita]

I opened acroread and found that it wants to save files in the directory I had
given in the browser embedded xpdf. How does acroread know it?
May be you find an answer there.