embedding evince in Chrome

Submitted by drink on

One of the big problems with Google Chrome is the lack of inline PDF support on most platforms. Google has added preliminary support for PDF to Chromium but so far it has not come to Linux. It may come tomorrow, but until then, users who would like to avoid using acroread may use the following hack, at least on Ubuntu Lucid. As always, your mileage may vary.

The fix is a simple tweak to the /etc/mozpluggerrc file. (edit: A comment below purports to have a superior solution...)

### Acrobat Reader
#define(ACROREAD, [repeat swallow(acroread) fill : acroread -openInNewWindow /a "$fragment" "$file"])
define(ACROREAD, [repeat swallow(evince) fill needs_xembed : evince "$file"])

The commented line is the original. The replacement is what seems to load evince with the file in a tab in chromium-daily right now on Lucid. I installed mozplugger but not acroread. You could make this change other ways; they are left as an exercise to the reader. This will prevent acrobat reader from loading even if it is installed, which some may find desirable. Keystrokes never reach the embedded application, but this will prevent you only from searching within the file. This is annoying! But at least it works, unlike the default means of loading evince via mozplugger.

Tags: 
howto
PDF
chrome browser
evince
mozplugger

Comments

pedorro replied on

Thanks for the tip!! Works with okular too (I'm also on Lucid). define(ACROREAD, [repeat swallow(okular) fill needs_xembed : okular "$file"])

drink replied on

Whether it is there or not probably depends on whether you've upgraded or installed to get to a recent version of ubuntu. I'll see if I can come up with a more modern edition at some point.

Anonymous replied on

thanks, still works in Ubuntu 11.04 and Chromium 14. really nice would be a solution that works in /etc/mozpluggerrc.d/62-documents.conf as /etc/mozpluggerrc shouldn't be edited.

Anonymous replied on

Thanks a lot, it does work after trying to find a lot of different solutions.

Daniel replied on

Got it to work with Linux Mint 13 and Chromium 20. Since i did not want to edit /etc/mozpluggerrc, i looked in /etc/mozpluggerrc.d/62-documents.conf and found out, that evince is already listed! so i ran update-mozpluggerrc, and it worked! Since i use Linux Mint with cinnamon, i had to create the file ~/.config/evince/evince_toolbar.xml with the content <?xml version="1.0"?> to get rid of the toolbar. Works fine. (The hint with the toolbar i got from http://moserei.de/2011/02/10/evince-with-tabs.html )

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