[Okular-devel] New Interface for Okular

[Michel Ludwig]

Hi all,

I plan to add a "live preview" feature to Kile, i.e. Kile would automatically 
run LaTeX when the LaTeX document is changed, display the result and 
synchronize the cursor position between the displayed and the compiled 
document. A screenshot of the current state can be found at

  http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gE5coDhMnBHZlNfPQxFpjg

(The red line indicates  the current position of the cursor in the text 
editor) But for everything to work properly, a tighter interaction between 
Kile and Okular is required. So far, I've added a "ViewerInterface" to Okular 
which has the following methods:

 virtual void setMinimalMode(bool b);

 virtual void showSourceLocation(const QString& fileName, int line, int
                                                     column);

 virtual void setWatchFileModeEnabled(bool b);

 // SIGNALS
 void openSourceReference(const QString& absFileName, int line, int column);

I think that the interface could also be extended so that it would allow 
access to other actions of Okular, like the control of the zoom level, or 
access to printing.

Also, once this viewer mode is enabled Okular shouldn't show error dialog 
boxes, but it could maybe emit signals so that the host application can take 
appropriate actions or display the error messages in a different way.

Maybe it would also be a good idea to create a branch inside Okular's git 
repository which would hold the development of the new interface. In that way 
Kile users could test everything more easily.

What do you think?


Michel