Re: Suggestion / feature request

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Carlos Aguilar <carlos.aguilar@unilim.fr> writes:

Hi Carlos,

> I often use doc-view mode with medium to large pdf/ps/dvi files, when
> writing/modifying latex documents.

Yes, frequently changing documents are clearly not the prime use-case
for doc-view, exactly because of the reasons you mention.  Do you use
AUCTeX for writing your documents?  If yes, then preview-latex might be
exactly what you need.

,----[ (info "(preview-latex)Top") ]
|    preview-latex is a package embedding preview fragments into Emacs
| source buffers under the AUCTeX editing environment for LaTeX.  It uses
| `preview.sty' for the extraction of certain environments (most notably
| displayed formulas).  Other applications of this style file are
| possible and exist.
`----

> I wondered if it would be possible to keep a set of signatures of the
> pdf/ps/dvi pages processed so that those that are unchanged are not
> reconverted to (already existing) bitmap images.

Um, I have no idea how to do that.  Doc-view only knows the PNG images
generated from the original document, and you can't compare those with
pages in the document.

Well, it also has the old document's contents in the current buffer and
the updated document is on the file system, so in theory it could also
compare the documents.  But I have no clue how to do that.  Googling
around, I've found http://www.qtrac.eu/comparepdf.html, but I'm not sure
if it does the trick.  (Oh, and of course if the comparison of the docs
is not significantly cheaper than a reconversion, there's no sense in
doing so. ;-))

Bye,
Tassilo