File: doc-view.el.html

DocView is a document viewer for Emacs. It converts a number of document formats (including PDF, PS, DVI, Djvu, ODF, EPUB, CBZ, FB2, XPS and OXPS files) to a set of PNG (or TIFF for djvu) files, one image for each page, and displays the images inside an Emacs buffer. This buffer uses doc-view-mode which provides convenient key bindings for browsing the document.

To use it simply open a document file with

    C-x C-f ~/path/to/document RET

and the document will be converted and displayed, if your Emacs supports PNG images. With C-c C-c you can toggle between the rendered images representation and the source text representation of the document.

Since conversion may take some time all the PNG images are cached in a subdirectory of doc-view-cache-directory and reused when you want to view that file again. To reconvert a document hit g (doc-view-reconvert-doc) when displaying the document. To delete all cached files use doc-view-clear-cache. To open the cache with Dired, so that you can tidy it out use doc-view-dired-cache.

When conversion is underway the first page will be displayed as soon as it is available and the available pages are refreshed every doc-view-conversion-refresh-interval seconds. If that variable is nil the pages won't be displayed before conversion of the document finished completely.

DocView lets you select a slice of the displayed pages. This slice will be remembered and applied to all pages of the current document. This enables you to cut away the margins of a document to save some space. To select a slice you can use doc-view-set-slice (bound to c s) which will query you for the coordinates of the slice's top-left corner and its width and height. A much more convenient way to do the same is offered by the command doc-view-set-slice-using-mouse (bound to c m). After invocation you only have to press mouse-1 at the top-left corner and drag it to the bottom-right corner of the desired slice. Even more accurate and convenient is to use doc-view-set-slice-from-bounding-box (bound to c b) which uses the BoundingBox information of the current page to set an optimal slice. To reset the slice use doc-view-reset-slice (bound to c r).

You can also search within the document. The command doc-view-search
(bound to C-s) queries for a search regexp and initializes a list of all
matching pages and messages how many match-pages were found. After that you can jump to the next page containing a match with an additional C-s. With C-r you can do the same, but backwards. To search for a new regexp give a prefix arg to one of the search functions, e.g. by typing C-u C-s. The searching works by using a plain text representation of the document. If that doesn't already exist the first invocation of doc-view-search (or doc-view-search-backward) starts the conversion. When that finishes and you're still viewing the document (i.e. you didn't switch to another buffer) you're queried for the regexp then.

Dired users can simply hit v on a document file. If it's a PS, PDF or DVI it will be opened using doc-view-mode.

Defined variables (57)

Defined functions (99)

Defined faces (1)