qpdfview

Can't launch qpdfview with --unique parameter

Asked by ralphl

I recently installed qpdfview 0.4.1.4. I believe it's installer installed the launcher, in my xubuntu 14.04 system, with the command "qpdfview --unique %F" (no quotes). Anyway it launches and goes away. If I change the launcher command to "qpdfview %F", it works nicely. Would you explain the --unique parameter, why it is needed, and why the standard installer installs it and it doesn't work. Actually I think it did work for a while and now doesn't.

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Adam Reichold (adamreichold) said : 		#1

Hello ralphl,

the '--unique' command-line option make qpdfview behave as a unique application, i.e. there will only be a single main window and every invocation will either instantiate that window or act upon it remotely. (There are several examples how this together with named instances can be used on the man page.) The default launcher used to not include this, but more people seem prefer the unique behaviour with every document opened via e.g. the file manager creating a tab instead of a new window. Hence we changed it.

In the background this works using D-Bus meaning that qpdfview registers on the session bus if no other instance has yet registered itself there. If so, the application connects to that already running instance, drops its requests (e.g. to open or refresh some file) and exits. If it does not work at all, there could be a D-Bus problem which should be able to diagnose by running qpdfview using a terminal which should give you access to the D-Bus error messages if there are any. If you could paste those here, maybe we can find a solution to the observed issue.

Best regards, Adam.

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ralphl (lachenmaier) said : 		#2

Now it started working fine with the --unique parameter, so it was either something I was doing wrong, or my system had something wrong. Sorry to have bothered you. Thank you very much for responding--and so quickly. And thank you very much for this app. Now that Evince no longer has a full screen mode, this has been a lifesaver. My only problem was that it took me a while to realize that "Docks" in the View menu really meant "Side Pane".