No inverse searches for dvi files in ubuntu

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

On lun, 2008-09-29 at 13:46 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> 
> > Having a decent dvi viewer was one of the strong points when showing
> > ubuntu to windows users in my department. Now will I show xdvi? And
> what
> > if my voice trembles when doing so? :) Notice that dvi is ONLY used
> > because of inverse searches of latex code - or else pdf covers all
> the
> > needs of a latex user and is more widely supported.
> >
> > Vincenzo
> 
> Did you try Okular?

I was perhaps unclear: sorry for long reply but it's better to summarise
everything. The situation with document viewers in ubuntu is as follows:

1) evince has a nasty bug with printing which prevents any serious usage
in a scientific environment. I reported this one year ago

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/150187

nevertheless, evince does not support inverse searches in dvi files.

2) consequently, one has to resort to alternatives. A possibility is
acrobat reader, but besides being non-free and heavy, it has NO way to
reload a document. This makes it unconfortable to be used when texing.
The other sane alternative is the kde document viewer.

3) Until intrepid, one had the choice between kpdf and kdvi. One used
the former if only interested in being able to view, print and reload a
document, the latter if also wanting "inverse search", a nice feature
where you click on the dvi document and the editor (e.g. emacs or kile)
goes to the source code. Very very useful when you typeset a paper.

4) In intrepid we have only one choice, which is okular - evince is
ruled out for the printing bug, acroread because it can not reload
documents. However, okular does NOT support inverse search, this breaks 
my workflow and that of many others

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdegraphics/+bug/273018


5) As a solution, I think I will have to get back to
dirty-hands-hackish-good-old-unix and re-learn xdvi.

That's all, and the reply to your question is, of course I am using
okular right now, it's opened and showing my Ph.D. thesis :) But it's
not as useful and powerful as kdvi. And it's much slower, btw.

Vincenzo