[okular] [Bug 514631] Opening in new tab from Windows Explorer 11

[Scott]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514631

--- Comment #1 from Scott <scott at mischko.com> ---
Here's what Gemini AI told me about this:

The behavior you're seeing is a documented architectural issue in the Windows
port.

  The Technical Root Cause
  Okular relies on KDBusService (a KDE wrapper for D-Bus) to handle
single-instance logic. Here is how it's designed to
  work:
   1. When you launch Okular with --unique, it tries to register a "well-known
name" on the D-Bus session bus.
   2. If the name is already taken, it sends the file path to the existing
instance via D-Bus and exits.
   3. The Windows Problem: On Linux, D-Bus is a system standard. On Windows,
Okular has to bundle a minimal D-Bus
      daemon. Because of how the Windows port is packaged, the second instance
often fails to connect to the "bus"
      created by the first instance, or the daemon is simply not compiled to
allow session-wide discovery in the same
      way.

  Can it be fixed?
  The logic to handle this is in Okular's shell/main.cpp. To fix it for
Windows, the code would likely need to be
  modified to use a native Windows mechanism (like a Named Pipe, MailSlot, or a
Hidden Window with WM_COPYDATA) instead
  of D-Bus when running on Q_OS_WIN.

  Currently, the source code shows that if D-Bus fails or is unavailable,
Okular just falls back to being a "normal"
  application, which results in a new window.

  Summary:
  Yes, Okular's code would need a Windows-specific patch to handle
single-instance discovery without a functioning D-Bus
  daemon. There is no configuration setting or registry hack that can bridge
this gap because the inter-process
  communication (IPC) channel itself is broken on the Windows port.

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