ciao when I set the "TeXing option" to "PDF mode", the default view cmd is xpdf -remote "pippo" -raise pippo.pdf what if 'xpdf' is not installed ? this spurs a lot of "buglets" and suggestions 0) auctex sports a nice icon for starting the viewer ; if the viewer fails (e.g. because it is not installed), no error is reported : this leaves the user clueless and wondering what has happened 1) according to http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt there is a virtual package 'pdf-viewer' . It would be sensible if auctex would recommend (or at least suggest) xpdf | pdf-viewer 2) it would be quite useful if, when the user issues the 'view' command while in PDF mode, then auctex would check if 'xpdf' is installed and, in case it is not, if it would change the default view command by scanning thru the list of pdf-viewers (evince, gv, kpdf, etc etc); and if none is found, then it should report an error. a. ps: solving bug #353097 would greatly improve bug reporting (due to #353097, 'reportbug' hangs until I type 'enter' 3 times). Please consider applying the patch in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi/a.diff?bug=389249;msg=10;att=1 ps2: la porti un bacione a Firenze^H^H^H^H Pisa
tags 409795 + confirmed upstream thanks Hi, this bug has been resolved for what concerns the Recommends part since auctex 11.83-5. It still misses run-time pdf-viewers automatic detection, which I'm tagging upstream.
Starting with auctex Debian version 11.86-9, AUCTeX recommends xpdf | evince | evince-gtk instead of xpdf | pdf-viewer and by default makes use of Evince if installed, falling back to xpdf otherwise. Rationale: upstream release 11.86 supports Evince and xpdf as pdf viewers (next upstream release will add Okular support), choosing Evince by default; the Debian package recommends xpdf first because of its lower footprint. While gv, viewpdf.app and zathura would be fine PDF viewers, there is no explicit upstream support for them (think about TeX-Source-Correlate mode), therefore the maintainer believes that users wishing to make use of them should manually customize TeX-view-predicate-list and TeX-view-program selection, possibly contributing their customization upstream afterwards. I will close this bug after catering for a proper error message if the user issues a View command while in PDF mode without any PDF viewer installed. I confirm severity normal rather than minor because of this.
tag 409795 + fixed-upstream thanks See <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=19121>.