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SLopUF: Sumatra and issue 635 (pdf locking)


From: Robin Bannister
Subject: SLopUF: Sumatra and issue 635 (pdf locking)
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:11:43 +0200

2.10.33 on Win XP SP3

I started using XP for Lilypond work about half a year ago, leaving behind 2.8.6. on Win98, where I had had Adobe Reader for viewing pdf output. I thought being on XP might offer the chance of finding a viewer which didn't get in the way of Lilypond generating its pdf.

In the wikipedia entry for SumatraPDF it said
.. unlike other PDF viewers it does not lock the PDF file.
So I tried 0.8, but it blocked Lilypond just the same. So did 0.7, but at least it seemed more stable. And I continued working rather like on Win98: - double click on 1.ly (my invariant filename) - File > Close in Sumatra 0.7 - wait for console window (Ghostscript) to come and go - drag (the new) 1.pdf onto Sumatra
i.e. the usual mouse drudgery, but there were two benefits:
- Sumatra usually applied the old position and zoom to the new file
- using Adobe for other things didn't interfere with my Lilypond work

The irritation remained: why must this be, when at the same time Lilypond is not bothered by the log file being left open in notepad? The discussion re issue 635 [1] reminded me of this, and a week ago I revisited Sumatra and saw that it now offered automatic reloading, i.e. indirectly reaffirming that you didn't have to close to allow updates. I thought of testing this using Windows Explorer and found that Sumatra - doesn't let you drag or delete the file (whereas notepad does) - but does let you overwrite it (as when dropping with +). I later found this distinction confirmed on the Sumatra forum [2]. So an effective workaround is to point Sumatra to a different file, e.g. viewer.pdf, and overwrite this when Lilypond is finished (like [3]):
copy 1.pdf viewer.pdf

The high-powered variant of this involves disabling
(if (access? pdf-name W_OK) (delete-file pdf-name))
as in issue 635, letting Lilypond do the overwriting (of 1.pdf) itself. This may be sufficient for some; things are now nicely streamlined. But I don't like the way the view gets out of sync when Lilypond aborts early due to a syntax error or somesuch. I might be distracted while waiting for the console window and the Sumatra refresh, and then think that my latest edit (e.g. an override) hadn't changed anything. So I recommend making the state of progress more obvious by doing
del 1.pdf
copy dummy.pdf viewer.pdf
before starting Lilypond, dummy.pdf being chosen as obviously different.

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2008-06/msg00088.html
[2] http://forums.fofou.org/sumatrapdf/topic?id=4933 [3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2006-07/msg00453.html


Cheers,
Robin

r3b




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