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I was thinking why kde should have two (or more) viewer applications. now we have okular for pdf+ps+djvu+... documents and gwenview for images+...
I believe this is a bit pointless since both programs are viewers after all. they provide the same feature but for different file types, with different interfaces and even different shortcuts for the same operation (come on, spacebar for next and backspace for previous in gwenview?). this is really confusing for the users (until they get used to it, of course). I think that every piece of software that deals with a specific file type (pdf, ps, djvu, jpeg, png, ... maybe even opendocument or ooxml) should be moven in a separate kpart plugin and then a unified viewer app should use this kparts accordingly provifing the user the same interface.

I'm against this. Document viewing has different requirements to image viewing: documents require easy navigation between pages/chunks of text and most often need to be best viewed as Portrait pages, while images vary between portait/landscape and most often need to show the whole image for the desired effect. Trying to lump both of these requirements into a single, unified viewer will just mean slower start-up and possibly less-specialized UI for what you're currently viewing, neither of which appeal to me.

Besides, Konqueror can unify several different, 'specialized' KPart interfaces into a single application: if all of these were lumped into one KPart, it would take an age and a day to load Konqueror, which is effectively the, "do-all" application you're looking for.

There is already such a unified viewer application. You named it already, it's called "okular"
Most distros seem to ship gwenview for images and okular for documents. I guess for the same reasons that Madman mentioned...

Madman wrote:I'm against this. Document viewing has different requirements to image viewing: documents require easy navigation between pages/chunks of text and most often need to be best viewed as Portrait pages, while images vary between portait/landscape and most often need to show the whole image for the desired effect. Trying to lump both of these requirements into a single, unified viewer will just mean slower start-up and possibly less-specialized UI for what you're currently viewing, neither of which appeal to me.

well... think of Apple's Preview. it does everything you are saying and it is quite fast

Patrik wrote:well... think of Apple's Preview. it does everything you are saying and it is quite fast

Yes, but it is far from a full and specialized application: it just shows you files. The preview widget does the same thing. You don't exactly show someone a full photo album in the Previewer, you open iPhoto for that.

Madman wrote:Yes, but it is far from a full and specialized application: it just shows you files.

that is the point of a viewer. a viewer should not be a specialized viewer, it should be as simple as possible and support as much file formats as possible. there are other advanced applications if you need to do other tasks besides viewing

You don't exactly show someone a full photo album in the Previewer, you open iPhoto for that.

I don't show someone a full photo album in gwenview, I open digikam for that

And do you read .pdf documents/eBooks in Digikam as well? Same thing.

What, exactly, is the problem with using okular as a general viewer?

Patrik wrote:well... think of Apple's Preview. it does everything you are saying and it is quite fast

Okular is the kde equivalent of Apple's Preview, but some distro's also ship with gwenview (and possibly others) that are better for some more specific functions.

If you want to open pictures in okular or whatever you prefer you can use "Configure file associations" in the advanced tab of System Settings to configure everything like you want it.

Isn't kde wonderfull...

Madman wrote:And do you read .pdf documents/eBooks in Digikam as well? Same thing.

no, I cannot. but it is not the same thing. digikam is not an image viewer, is a photo album manager

TheBlackCat wrote:What, exactly, is the problem with using okular as a general viewer?

okular does not support some features that gwenview has (like tagging), while gwenview does not manage pdf. my point is that kde has two different applications for the same task (viewing stuff) which differs only in GUI and supported files. this is confusing for the user and more complex to mantain

If okular lacks features you think it should have, then you should submit ideas for each of those features. But in the end okular is a unified quick file viewer, like apple's preview. Gwenview, on the other hand, is a dedicated picture viewer. It is not meant to be a generic file viewer any more than dragon player is or kate is. Just because we have a generic file viewer does not mean we cannot also have specialized viewers for particular sorts of files, viewers whose user interface and capabilities are optimized for those files (unlike okular, which has a generic user interface for a wide variety of files).