pdf-tools

pdf-tools

[aalinovi]

Running emacs-28.2 on OpenBSD

According to what I have read, all I have to do is install pdf-tools
thru MELPA and it should just work.

So, I install pdf-tools thru MELPA and every pdf document I open opens
in DocView.

As someone fairly new to emacs and no lisp knowledge, am I not understanding?

Thanks

Re: pdf-tools

[Scott Randby]

On 7/8/23 17:55, aalinovi@riseup.net wrote:
> Running emacs-28.2 on OpenBSD
> 
> According to what I have read, all I have to do is install pdf-tools
> thru MELPA and it should just work.
> 
> So, I install pdf-tools thru MELPA and every pdf document I open opens
> in DocView.
> 

Despite what the pdf-tools instructions state, I found that you need to put the following in your configuration file to get it to work:

(pdf-tools-install)

Scott Randby

pdf-tools

[aalinovi]

Running OpenBSD-current and upgraded to emacs-29.1. Still having problems trying to get pdf-tools to work. Apparently, it can't find aclocal which is in /usr/local/bin as aclocal-1.16.

I'm no programmer and what I know about emacs wouldn't fill a 3x5 index card so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Re: pdf-tools

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: aalinovi@riseup.net
> Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2023 11:35:39 -0400
> 
> Running OpenBSD-current and upgraded to emacs-29.1. Still having problems trying to get pdf-tools to work. Apparently, it can't find aclocal which is in /usr/local/bin as aclocal-1.16.

If that is the problem, just copy /usr/local/bin/aclocal-1.16 to
/usr/local/bin/aclocal.  Like this:

  cp -pv /usr/local/bin/aclocal-1.16 /usr/local/bin/aclocal

Re: pdf-tools

[tpeplt]

aalinovi@riseup.net writes:

> Running OpenBSD-current and upgraded to emacs-29.1. Still having
> problems trying to get pdf-tools to work. Apparently, it can't find
> aclocal which is in /usr/local/bin as aclocal-1.16.
>
> I'm no programmer and what I know about emacs wouldn't fill a 3x5
> index card so any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks

1. You might find Emacs built-in pdf viewer (the ‘doc-view’ package)
   sufficient for your needs.  It is integrated into C-x C-f (the
   ‘find-file’ command) so you can simply "open" the pdf file as you
   would any other (supported) file type.  Once you have the file loaded
   into a DocView buffer, you will want to know how to use the doc-view
   mode.  Type ‘?’ or C-h m to get a description of the mode, including the
   mode-specific keybindings.  ‘n’ moves to the next page in the
   document and ‘p’ moves to the previous page.  Or, the space bar <SPC>
   moves to the next page and the backspace key <backspace> moves to the
   previous page.

   Document Viewing is also a chapter in the Emacs Manual.  You can view
   it by typing the following: M-: (info "(emacs) Document View")

2. The package ‘pdf-tools’ that is listed in the Melpa repository is
   marked as ‘incompatible’ for Emacs.  The rest of this message is a
   copy of the description provided via the *Packages* listing (via
   ‘list-packages’ command):

Package pdf-tools is incompatible.

     Status: Incompatible because it depends on uninstallable packages.
    Archive: melpa-stable
    Version: 1.1.0
     Commit: a9c9a12c3ecf2005fa641059368ac8284f507620
    Summary: Support library for PDF documents
   Requires: emacs-26.3, tablist-1.0 (not available), let-alist-1.0.4
    Website: https://github.com/vedang/pdf-tools/
   Keywords: files multimedia 
 Maintainer: Vedang Manerikar <vedang.manerikar@gmail.com>
     Author: Andreas Politz <mail@andreas-politz.de>


PDF Tools is, among other things, a replacement of DocView for PDF
files.  The key difference is, that pages are not prerendered by
e.g. ghostscript and stored in the file-system, but rather created
on-demand and stored in memory.

Note: This package is built and tested on GNU/Linux systems. It
works on macOS and Windows, but is officially supported only on
GNU/Linux systems. This package will not make macOS or Windows
specific functionality changes, behaviour on these systems is
provided as-is.

Note: If you ever update it, you need to restart Emacs afterwards.

To activate the package put

(pdf-tools-install)

somewhere in your .emacs.el .

M-x pdf-tools-help RET

gives some help on using the package and

M-x pdf-tools-customize RET

offers some customization options.

Features:

* View
  View PDF documents in a buffer with DocView-like bindings.

* Isearch
  Interactively search PDF documents like any other buffer. (Though
  there is currently no regexp support.)

* Follow links
  Click on highlighted links, moving to some part of a different
  page, some external file, a website or any other URI.  Links may
  also be followed by keyboard commands.

* Annotations
  Display and list text and markup annotations (like underline),
  edit their contents and attributes (e.g. color), move them around,
  delete them or create new ones and then save the modifications
  back to the PDF file.

* Attachments
  Save files attached to the PDF-file or list them in a Dired buffer.

* Outline
  Use imenu or a special buffer to examine and navigate the PDF's
  outline.

* SyncTeX
  Jump from a position on a page directly to the TeX source and
  vice-versa.

* Misc
   + Display PDF's metadata.
   + Mark a region and kill the text from the PDF.
   + Search for occurrences of a string.
   + Keep track of visited pages via a history.

pdf-tools

[aalinovi]

Several days ago I wrote about the problems I was having getting pdf-tools to install.
I'd like to that Eli and tpeplt for taking the time to respond.

Unfortunately, I still can't get it working.
I followed Eli's advice re aclocal but then trying pdf-tools-install returns:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Building the PDF Tools server failed")
signal(error ("Building the PDF Tools server failed"))
error("%s" "Building the PDF Tools server failed")
#f(compiled-function (executable) #<bytecode 0x10759317b39ed228>)(nil)
#f(compiled-function (buffer status) #<bytecode -0x1dcd21fe4553cec5>)(#<buffer
commpilation*> "exited abnormally with code 1\n") run-hook-with-args(#f(compiled-function (buffer status) #<bytecode
-0x1dcd21fe4553cec5>) #<buffer *compilation*> "exited abnormally with code 1\n")
compilation-handle-exit(exit 1 "exited abnormally with code 1\n")
compilation-sentinel(#<process comint> "exited abnormally with code 1\n"

I don't expect to have anyone take the time to interpret this for me so I may just go with tpeplt's suggestion and simply
use DocView. I also have OpenWith installed so I could set that up to open pdf files in Zathura.

Arthur

Re: pdf-tools

[Philip Kaludercic]

aalinovi@riseup.net writes:

> Several days ago I wrote about the problems I was having getting
> pdf-tools to install.
> I'd like to that Eli and tpeplt for taking the time to respond.
>
> Unfortunately, I still can't get it working.
> I followed Eli's advice re aclocal but then trying pdf-tools-install returns:
>
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Building the PDF Tools server failed")
> signal(error ("Building the PDF Tools server failed"))
> error("%s" "Building the PDF Tools server failed")
> #f(compiled-function (executable) #<bytecode 0x10759317b39ed228>)(nil)
> #f(compiled-function (buffer status) #<bytecode -0x1dcd21fe4553cec5>)(#<buffer
> commpilation*> "exited abnormally with code 1\n")
> run-hook-with-args(#f(compiled-function (buffer status) #<bytecode
> -0x1dcd21fe4553cec5>) #<buffer *compilation*> "exited abnormally with code 1\n")
> compilation-handle-exit(exit 1 "exited abnormally with code 1\n")
> compilation-sentinel(#<process comint> "exited abnormally with code 1\n"

It is not particularly difficult to interpret the stack trace, it just
doesn't contain enough information to tell exactly what the issue was.
A subprocess failed, possibly due to missing build-time dependencies.
Unless I am mistaken, you should be able to see what went wrong in the
"*compilation*" buffer.

> I don't expect to have anyone take the time to interpret this for me
> so I may just go with tpeplt's suggestion and simply
> use DocView. I also have OpenWith installed so I could set that up to
> open pdf files in Zathura.

If you are on Emacs 29 or newer and have mutools[0] installed, check out
the `doc-view-mupdf-use-svg' user option.  It improves the readability
significantly.

[0] https://mupdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/mupdf-command-line.html#mutool

> Arthur