Simple program to open a file in existing zathura instance
Project description
znp
znp stands for Zathura Next Or Previous. You can also use znp to add a given file to an instance of zathura.
Usage
Next or Previous
The main goal of znp is to provide an easy way to go to the next or previous
file from within zathura. As of
yet this functionality is not a
part of zathura's functionality. However, after installing znp
you can add the
following to your zathurarc
to set N
and P
to go to the next or previous
file:
map N exec "znp -n '$FILE'"
map P exec "znp -p '$FILE'"
" Please note the ^ ^ apostrophes around $FILE.
" These are necessary for files with whitespace
Note that if your system does not use extended window manager hints
(ewmh), or
you do not have the ewmh python package installed; then, this command may fail
if you have two instances of zathura open in the same directory. This is not
something that I have a reasonable fix for and there is no way to reliably
determine the instance issuing the next or previous command. The only way I can
think of fixing this would require patching zathura to include expansion of a
$PID
variable from the exec function and include that in the zathurarc
command. However, I am a not a programmer so reviewing the code base and
getting this functionality added may take me some time.
Adding files
znp can act as a zathura wrapper and add a given file to an existing instance:
znp file.pdf
znp /path/to/file.pdf
You can give znp a relative or absolute path to file. znp will insert the
current working directory to make a relative path absolute. No variable
expansion will performed by znp as it expects $HOME
and such to get expanded
by the shell calling znp.
The above works best when only one instance of zathura exists. However, if
multiple exist then zathura will use the user defined prompt_cmd
set in
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/znp/znp.conf
to present a list of zathura instances to open
the file in. The default is fzf
but you may use dmenu
or rofi
. Here is
how this looks in practice:
To aviod any prompting you can pass the desired pid to use with the -P
flag:
znp -P 123456 file.pdf
znp -P 123456 /path/to/file.pdf
This would require a bit more work on your part but it may be useful in scripting.
Query
Speaking of scripting, I added the -q, --query
flag for my personal scripting
purposes.
The --query
flag will take the FILE
argument given to znp and search all
zathura pids for the first (see the note in the next or
previous section) one that has that file open and return
it's pid. I make use of this to track my last read pdf, epub, cbz/r, zip, etc.
using the returned pid to kill the assumed instance issuing the command.
Basically a session tracker so to speak. Maybe there are other purposes for this
or maybe the zathura.py
module would be useful as a standalone module for
interacting with zathura via dbus. No clue, let me know.
User config
You can set the default command prompt in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/znp/znp.conf
like
so:
prompt_cmd = dmenu
Note there are no quotes. You can also skip the spaces if you like.
If you have any args/flags you want to use with your command prompt add them like so:
prompt_args = -l 20 -i
Simply provide the args/flags as you would normally when using your chosen prompt_cmd.
Note If your prompt_args contain an =
sign then please escape it with a
backslash otherwise you will get an error.
Installation
znp is available via pypi and can install it via pip in the usual way:
pip install znp
Use the following if you are installing on a system running X and using ewmh:
pip install znp[x11]
Ensure ~/.local/bin
is in your $PATH
otherwise znp will not be callable from
zathura unless you give the full path to znp.
Dependencies
python-magic
- used to detect the file type of the next file to prevent zathura from opening an unreadable file, e.g. log files, markdown files, etc.psutil
- used to get zathura pids.
Optional Dependency
ewmh
- used to get the pid of window calling znp. This is a bit hacky but does allow for the core functionality (opening the next or previous file) to work without issue. Provided under the[x11]
branch.
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