How can I open multiple instances of the same document in Evince?

Question

Evince opens new documents in the existing window. I'd like to see many pages of a PDF file at the same time.

For example, say I'm reading a paper in one instance of Evince on page 3 and I want another instance of Evince to be on the page with references, page 27.

> evince 1.pdf&

opens an Evince window containing 1.pdf, but then

> evince 1.pdf&

does nothing. I have a total of one Evince window.

I would like to have two windows, each displaying 1.pdf. How can I achieve this?

score 34 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 11 '11 at 19:19

34

Open the file then from menu:

File -> Open a Copy

answered Feb 11 '11 at 19:19

cYrus

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 11 '11 at 20:22

3

I've voted for CYrus's answer, which I think is probably best for most users. If you really want to do it from the command line, I suppose there's always a script like this:

#!/bin/bash
PDFNAME="$1"
TEMPNAME="$(mktemp --suffix=.pdf)"
cp "$PDFNAME" "$TEMPNAME"
evince "$TEMPNAME"
rm "$TEMPNAME"

answered Feb 11 '11 at 20:22

frabjous

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It seems that a symlink works too. – cYrus Feb 11 '11 at 20:27
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or this one-liner: `cp "$1" \`mktemp\` && evince "$_" && rm "$_"` – leemes Apr 07 '12 at 16:25
1

Nice solution if used with a symlink, but nonetheless too bad that a unix app command line version has fewer options than the GUI – Roland Jun 20 '16 at 00:17
@leemes awesome one-liner, I think this modification would be sweet though: `evince "$1" & cp "$1" \`mktemp\` && evince "$_" && rm "$_"` – Severo Raz Aug 15 '18 at 08:32

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 13 '12 at 20:03

1

Copy the original PDF file,
Save the copy in the same location or desktop, give a different name.
Then you can open the both files without going through all the troubles of configuring the path's.

edited Jun 13 '12 at 20:03

slhck

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answered Jun 13 '12 at 15:01

Atique Ahmed

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Welcome to Super User! Please keep the answers to the bare minimum necessary to answer the question. Check your formatting, and please don't sign your posts, as you can read in our [FAQ]. Thank you! – slhck Jun 13 '12 at 20:03

How can I open multiple instances of the same document in Evince?

3 Answers3