GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 323107
Page Up/Down should do page jumps in "Best fit" mode
Last modified: 2006-10-19 16:12:36 UTC
If evince is viewing a document in "Best fit" zooming mode (that means exactly one page is visible), the Page Up and Page Down keyboard shortcuts do not jump to the previous/next page, but scroll less than a page. Evince should treat Page Up/Page Down in Best Fit mode as Ctrl-Page Up/Ctrl-Page Down, which does The Right Thing.
Created attachment 55574 [details] [review] Proposed patch
Hi Wouter, thanks for the patch This problem was discussed earlier, and there was not clear solution for such choice, at least for me. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 308826 ***
Well, I think my patch implements the desired behaviour. Since you have to choose the Best Fit mode yourself (it's not the default), thereby explicitly stating "I want to see exactly one page", you would expect the rest of the UI respecting that choice.
You are referring to bug #308826 I suppose. Brian W. Clark commented in comment #308826#5 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308826#c5), stating: > "Hi I don't like this change" ... but he is commenting on the suggestion at comment number 4 of that bug. It's totally ridiculous that "page up" and "page down" don't go a "page up" and a "page down" after you've EXPLICITY stated you want to view JUST ONE PAGE AT THE TIME!
Excuse me for the capitals. I'm rather annoyed with the current behaviour. :)
Btw, Wouter, if you subscribed to usability list, this subject is discussed currently: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00220.html Probably it may have sense to post your opinion also
I don't think that thread is really relevant. Yes, having consistency between applications is nice, but having applications that do what the user wants is nicer. I cannot come up with any even remotely plausible scenario where someone using "best fit" mode would want (or expect) space/backspace/pageup/pagedown to scroll in 75%-of-a-page increments, regardless of how those keys behave in other apps and other evince modes. Consistency isn't a goal, it's a means. The goal is Helping the User, and when Consistency is in the way of that goal, it needs to stand aside and make room for Clever Special Cases.
*** Bug 351717 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This bug (and having to resize the evince window every time I open a PDF document in Firefox) make using evince a total pain in the neck. All I want with a PDF, 95% of the time, is for it to open in a sensible-sized window on my screen and to be able to page through it one page at a time. As it is, every time I view a PDF I have to first resize the window and change the view to "Best Fit". And then for every new page I either have to hit space twice, or I have to control-pagedown, which leaves my hands permanently in an uncomfortable position and seems likely to cause RSI if used with long PDFs (so I stick with space-space). I don't care what the default behaviour is (though my usage is surely similar to most peoples), just give me some way of overriding it to get what I want. I guess it's back to xpdf for the moment, sigh.
I'd like to add my vote to the chorus of people suggesting that Pagedown should do just that in Best Fit mode. I can't understand how anything else makes any sense! Note that this is precisely the behaviour adopted by Adobe Acrobat reader: in best fit mode, pagedown moves precisely one entire page at a time, whilst in non best fit hitting pagedown moves the view area slightly less than a screenful. In Acrobat Reader, if you don't start on a page boundary, then ctrl-pagedown/up will move the view such that it starts at the top of the next/previous page respectively. In best fit mode, ctrl-pagedown and pagedown have the same result. (I'd also like the option to make Best Fit mode the default, but you can't have everything!) Obviously free software should not slavishly follow the UI decision of commercial programs, but the current evince pagedown UI just seems wrong to me. cheers, Phil
This is the nth time (n>4) users complain about this (imho) buggy behaviour. Unless someone comes up with *really good* argument against "page up/down should scroll one page in best fit mode" (this is only about best fit mode!), I will commit the patch from #c1 to HEAD.
The patch is simpler in recent evince, because there's already a special case to make scrolling work this way in presentation mode. So in ev_view_scroll(), just change if (view->presentation) { to if (view->presentation || view->sizing_mode == EV_SIZING_BEST_FIT) { And if people really think we shouldn't make this change, then can you please remove the special case for presentation mode? It would make it more "consistent". :)
Shoot me ;) 2006-10-19 Wouter Bolsterlee <wbolster@cvs.gnome.org> * shell/ev-view.c: (ev_view_scroll): Page Up/Down should do page jumps in "Best fit" mode. If a user has explicitly chosen to view exactly one page at a time, scrolling just a part of the page when pressing Page Up/Down is not right. Fixes bug #323107.
Hooray!