The Okular Handbook

The Okular Handbook

Albert Astals Cid

Pino Toscano

Revision 1.3 (Applications 17.12) (2017-11-06)

Okular is a KDE universal document viewer based on KPDF code.


Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 1. Introduction

Okular is a KDE universal document viewer based on the code of the KPDF application. Although being based on KPDF code, Okular has some unique features such as overview mode, improved presentation support and annotation support.

Okular supports a lot of different formats like PDF, PostScript®, Tiff, CHM, DjVU, Images (png, jpg, etc.) XPS, Open Document (ODT), Fiction Books, Comic Book, Plucker, EPub, Fax and Markdown. For all supported formats and their features see Okular Document Format Handlers.

Okulars Main Window
Chapter 2. Basic Usage

Chapter 2. Basic Usage

Opening Files

To view any supported file in Okular, select FileOpen..., choose a supported file in the dialog and click Open. Your file should now be displayed in the main window.

Important

The new document will be opened in a new tab should the Open new files in tabs option on the General configuration page is checked.

If you have already opened files in Okular before, you can quickly access them by selecting them in the FileOpen Recent menu.

Okular is the default KDE application for PDF and PostScript® files, launched when you click with the left mouse button on such a file type in the filemanager. If you want to open any file whose format is supported by Okular use Open with...Okular from context menu in the filemanager.

After having a file opened you probably want to read it and therefore navigate through it. Go to the next section to learn more about this.

Navigating

Navigating

This section describes how you can navigate through a document in Okular.

There are multiple ways of scrolling the viewing area. One is to use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys. You may also use the scrollbar, your mousewheel or the Page Up and Page Down keys.

You can also use vim-like navigation keys, namely H to move to the top of the previous page, L to move to the top of the next page, J to move one line down, and K to move one line up.

Another way is to hold the left mouse button down at any place on the document while dragging the mouse in the opposite direction of where you want to move. This procedure only works if the Browse Tool is enabled, which you can select by choosing ToolsBrowse Tool.

Note

When viewing a document in the Presentation mode use Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys to switch between pages or slides. The number and the position of the current slide will be shown in the overlay at the right upper corner of screen.

If you want to read a document with several pages use the automatic scrolling feature of Okular. Start automatic scrolling with Shift+Down Arrow or Shift+Up Arrow. Then use these keys to increase and decrease the scrolling speed. You can start or stop automatic scrolling temporarily by pressing the Shift key; pressing any other key deactivates this feature.

Another way to navigate through a document with several pages is to use the mouse pointer. Drag the page up or down, continue to drag even while reaching the bottom or top of the screen and behold. Once you cross the border of a page, the mouse cursor appears on top or bottom of the screen again and you can just continue to drag.

The navigation panel on the left side of the screen enables two more ways of navigating through a document:

  • If you click on a page thumbnail the viewing area will be brought to that page.

  • If the document has a table of contents, clicking on a table of contents item will bring the document to the page linked to that item.

  • If the document has layers, you can control the layers shown by checking or unchecking the items in the Layers list.

  • If the document has bookmarks, enable the Bookmarks view and click them to go to the associated page. If bookmarks are not only shown for the current document, you can quickly switch to bookmarks in all recently opened files.

  • If the document has annotations, enable the Reviews view and click the annotations or select them with the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys and press Return to go to the associated page.

Some documents have links. In this case you can click on them and the view will change to the page it links to. If the link is to a web page or some other document the default KDE handler for that format will be invoked. For example, clicking on a link pointing to http://www.kde.org will open the web page in the default KDE's web browser.

Important

The document internal links work only when Browse Tool is used.

Additionally, you may use the following functionality to quickly move to specific places in the document:

  • You can go to the beginning of the document using Ctrl+Home or using GoBeginning of the document.

  • You can go to the end of the document using Ctrl+End or using GoEnd of the document.

  • You can go forward in the document using Space or Page Down. To go to the next page of the document use the Next Page Toolbar button or GoNext Page in the menubar.

  • You can go back in the document using Backspace or Page Up. To go to the previous page of the document use Previous Page Toolbar button or GoPrevious Page in the menubar.

  • You can go back to the positions in the document where you came from in a chronological order. Consider e.g. reading the phrase As shown in [15], …, and you want to know quickly lookup reference [15]. So you click on it, and Okular will jump to the list of references. Using Alt+Shift+Left or GoBack in the menubar will bring you back to exactly the position where you came from.

  • You can go forward in the document after the jumping back as described above using Alt+Shift+Right or GoForward in the menubar.

  • You can go to the next match when searching using F3 or Enter (when the focus is on Find text field) keys or EditFind Next menu item or move back to the previous match using Shift+F3 or Shift+Enter (when the focus is on Find text field) keys or EditFind Previous menu item.

Presentation Mode

Presentation Mode

The Presentation mode represents another way to view documents in Okular. It can be enabled in ViewPresentation. It shows the document on a page per page basis. The pages are shown with zoom to page, that means all the page is visible.

Note

PDF documents can even specify that they are always opened in presentation mode.

When in presentation mode, you have an helper bar located on the top of the screen. Just move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen to make it appear.

Okular in Presentation Mode

To navigate between pages you may use the left mouse button (next page) and the right mouse button (previous page), the mouse wheel, the arrow icons or the line edit in the top bar, or the keys specified in the Navigating section.

Use Play/Pause button in the top bar to start playing presentation or pause it, correspondingly.

You can exit presentation mode at any time by pressing the Esc key or clicking the Quit icon in the top bar.

You can also draw on the current page with a pencil. Click on the Toggle Drawing Mode icon in the top bar to enable or disable the possibility to draw in the presentation mode. The drawings are cleared automatically when leaving the presentation mode. You can also click on the Erase Drawings icon to remove the drawings in the current page.

The presentation mode has support for more than one screen in a multi-monitor configuration. With more than one screen a new button will appear in the top bar, with the icon of a screen: this is a drop down box that allows you to move the presentation to any of the other available screens.

Presentation mode has some configuration options, you can find their description in the chapter Configuring Okular.

Inverse Search between LATEX Editors and Okular

Inverse Search between LATEX Editors and Okular

Inverse search is a very useful feature when you are writing a LATEX document yourself. If everything is set up properly, you can click into Okular's window with the left mouse button while pressing Shift. After that editor loads the LATEX source file and jumps to the proper paragraph.

Inverse search cannot work unless:

  • The source file has been compiled successfully.

  • Okular knows which editor you would like to use.

  • The Browse Tool has to be enabled, which you can select by choosing ToolsBrowse Tool .

With this feature of Okular, a left mouse click while pressing Shift in the DVI or PDF document will result in editor opening the corresponding LATEX document and attempt to go to the corresponding line. Remember to tell Okular to use proper editor, in Okular's menu item SettingsConfigure Okular... (on the page Editor).

For more details on editor configuration please refer to the corresponding section of this manual.

Configuring editor in Okular

Configuring editor in Okular

Chapter 3. Okular Advanced Features

Chapter 3. Okular Advanced Features

Embedded Files

If the current document has some files embedded in it, when you open it a yellow bar will appear above the page view to notify you about the embedded files.

The embedded files bar

In this case, you can either click on the link in the text of the bar or choose FileEmbedded Files to open the embedded files dialog. The dialog allows you to view the embedded files and to extract them.

Forms

Forms

If the current document has forms, when you open it a bar will appear above the page view where you can enable the forms.

The forms bar

In this case, you can either click on Show Forms in the bar or choose ViewShow Forms to enter data into the form fields.

Annotations

Annotations

Okular allows you to review and annotate your documents.

Okular's Annotations

Okular has two different kind of annotations:

Text annotations like Yellow Highlighter and Black Underlining for files with text like e.g. PDF.

Graphic annotations like Pop-up Note, Inline Note, Freehand Line, Highlighter, Straight Line, Polygon, Stamp, Underline, and Ellipse for all formats supported by Okular.

Using the context menu either in the Reviews view of the navigation panel or in the main window you can open a Pop up Note for any kind of annotation and add or edit comments.

Annotations are not only limited to PDF files, they can be used for any format Okular supports.

Okular has the "document archiving" feature. This is an Okular-specific format for carrying the document plus various metadata related to it (currently only annotations). You can save a "document archive" from the open document by choosing FileSave As and selecting Okular document archive in the Filter selector. To open an Okular document archive, just open it with Okular as it would be e.g. a PDF document.

You can also save annotations directly into PDF files. You can use FileSave to save it over the current file or FileSave As... to save it to a new file.

Note

Due to DRM limitations (typically with PDF documents), adding, editing some properties or removing annotations could not be possible.

Note

Any action on annotations (creation and removal of annotations, editing arbitrary annotation properties, relocating annotations with Ctrl+drag, and editing the text contents of an annotation) can be undone or redone using the corresponding item from the Edit menu. It is also possible to undo the action by pressing Ctrl+Z and redo the undone action by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Z.

You can configure the default properties and appearance of each annotating tool. Please refer to the corresponding section in this documentation.

Adding annotations

To add some annotations to the document, you have to activate the annotating toolbar. This is done by either selecting ToolsReview or pressing F6. Once the annotating toolbar is shown, just press one of its buttons or use keyboard shortcuts (keys from 1 to 9) to start constructing that annotation.

The annotating toolbar helps you to make annotations with drawings, shapes, and text messages. You can use the annotating toolbar to mark up a document (e.g. add lines, ellipses, polygons, stamps, highlights, underlines etc.). The table below describes exactly what the default set of annotating toolbar buttons does.

Button Tool Name Description

Pop-up Note

To draw multiline note. The note will can be viewed by double clicking on an icon in the document.

Click on the tool button, then click on the place in the document where the pop-up note should be added. Enter the text of pop-up note then click on the Close this note button in the top right corner of the pop-up window.

Inline Note

To draw inline note. The note will be shown inline as is.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button and hold to place the top-left corner of the note, then drag to place the bottom-right one. Enter the text of the note then click on the OK to save the note, Cancel to cancel note entering or Clear to clear the note.

Freehand Line

To draw free-form lines.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button and hold to place the start of the line, then drag to draw the line.

Highlighter

To highlight text in the document with some given background color.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button and hold to place the beginning of the highlighted text snippet, then drag to highlight it.

Straight Line

To mark with a line.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button to place the starting point of the line, then drag to place of the ending point of the line should be and click once more.

Polygon

To draw a closed plane figure from three or more segments. The corresponding note can be viewed by double clicking inside the polygon.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button to place the first vertex of the polygon, then drag to place of the second vertex. Proceed until you draw the whole polygon up to the first vertex. Click twice if you want to add some note to the polygon. Enter the text of the note then click on the OK to save the note, Cancel to cancel note entering or Clear to clear the note.

Stamp

To mark the text or image with some predefined shape.

Click on the tool button then click with the left mouse button to place the stamp.

A single click just places a square stamp (useful for icons). To add a rectangular stamp you can click with the left mouse button and hold to place the top-left point, then drag to place the bottom-right one.

Underline

To underline some text.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button and hold to place the beginning of the underlined text snippet, then drag to underline it.

Ellipse

To draw an ellipse around some chosen area.

Click on the tool button, then click with the left mouse button and hold to place the top-left corner of the circumscribed rectangular for the ellipse, then drag to place the bottom-right one.

The contents of the annotating toolbar can be configured using the Annotations page of Okular configuration dialog. This page can be opened with right mouse button clicking on the annotating toolbar then choosing Configure Annotations... from the context menu.

With a single left mouse button click on an annotation tool button you can use a tool once. If you e.g. want to highlight all important parts of a text, activate that tool permanently by double clicking on the tool button. Press the Esc key or click the tool button again to leave the permanent mode.

Note

The annotating toolbar can be docked in any side of the viewing area: just drag it to move it to another place.

Note

Activating the annotating toolbar will make you switch to the Browse Tool Mode.

You can stop the construction any time by pressing again on the button of the annotation you are constructing, or by pressing the Esc key.

The newly constructed annotation will have as author the author you set in the Annotations page in Okulars configuration dialog. The Annotations page can also be used to configure the content of the annotating toolbar.

Removing annotations

To remove an annotation, just click on it with the right mouse button, and select Delete or select an annotation using the left mouse button and press the Del key.

When removing the annotation, its window will be closed if open.

Note

This option could not be enabled because the document does not allow removing annotations.

Editing annotations

To edit an annotation, click on it with the right mouse button and select Properties. A dialog will appear with the general annotation settings (like color and opacity, author, etc.) and the settings specific to that annotation type.

Annotation Property Dialog

To move an annotation, hold down the Ctrl key, move the mouse pointer on it and then start dragging with the left mouse button.

If you click with the left mouse button on an annotation, it gets selected. Resize handles appear on the selection rectangle. When the cursor is moved over one of the 8 resize handles on the corners or edges, the cursor shape changes to indicate the resize mode. Click anywhere else on the annotation to move it. Pressing Esc or clicking an area outside the annotation cancels a selection.

Resizing is only applicable for annotation types Inline Note, Stamp and Ellipse.

Note

Depending on the document permissions (typically with PDF documents), some options can be disabled.

Bookmark Management

Bookmark Management

Okular has a very flexible bookmark system. Okular saves the position on the page in bookmark and allows you to define more than one bookmark per page.

To manage bookmarks in Okular you can use Bookmarks view from Navigation Panel, Bookmarks menu or context menu of document view (click with right mouse button to open it).

Bookmarks view

To open Bookmarks view click on Bookmarks item on the Navigation Panel. If the Navigation Panel is not shown, use SettingsShow Navigation Panel (F7) main menu item to make it visible.

Bookmark view context menu

The filter bar at the top of Bookmarks view can be used to filter the content of bookmark list pane according to the text in the box.

The list pane permits to view the bookmark list in a tree-like fashion: each document in the list can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the < or v icon next to it.

Click on icon below the list to show only the bookmarks from the current document.

Right-click menu of document item can be used to open document, rename its item or remove it from the list. Remember that the removal of a document item leads to the removal of all bookmarks in the corresponding document.

Right-click menus of individual bookmark items allow you to go to the bookmark, rename or remove it.

The Right-click menu of items in the table of contents can be used to create bookmarks or go to the next or previous bookmark.

Command Line Options

Command Line Options

Though Okular may most often be started from the KDE program menu, or a desktop icon, it can also be opened at the command line prompt of a terminal window. There are a few useful options that are available when doing this.

Specify a File

By specifying the path and name of a particular file the user can have Okular open that file immediately upon startup. This option might look something like the following:

% okular /home/myhome/docs/mydoc.pdf  

Note

For PDF documents, the name can be given as document_name#named_destination where named_destination is a particular named destination embedded in the document.

Other Command Line Options

The following command line help options are available

okular -p --page number

Open a page with a given number in the document. Also available through okular -p number

okular --presentation

Start the document in presentation mode.

okular --print

Start with print dialog.

okular --unique

Unique instance control.

okular --noraise

Allows to prevent Okular window raising after the start.

Fit window to page

Fit window to page

The Fit window to page feature resizes the window so that it is exactly the same size as the page at the current zoom factor. If the page doesn't completely fit on the screen, the window is enlarged so that the largest possible part of the page is shown.

This feature can be accessed by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J

Chapter 4. The Menubar

Chapter 4. The Menubar

The File Menu

FileOpen... (Ctrl+O)

Open a supported file or Okular document archive. If there is already an opened file it will be closed. For more information, see the section about Opening Files.

FileOpen Recent

Open a file which was used previously from a submenu. If a file is currently being displayed it will be closed. For more information, see the section about Opening Files.

FileImport PostScript as PDF...

Open a PostScript® file and convert it to PDF.

FileSave (Ctrl+S)

Saves the document including all the changes (annotations, form contents, etc.), provided the document backend supports saving those changes. If the backend does not support saving the changes, the user will be given the option to either discard or to save them together with the document in an Okular document archive.

FileSave As... (Ctrl+Shift+S)

Saves the document under a new name including all the changes (annotations, form contents, etc.), provided the document backend supports saving changes. If the backend does not support saving the changes, the user will be given the option to either discard or to save them together with the document in an Okular document archive.

Note

Note that, due to the way this is implemented, even if there are no changes to the file, the new file need not to be an exact bit-for-bit copy of the original file (e.g. can have a different SHA-1 hash, etc.).

FileReload (F5)

Reload the currently open file.

FilePrint... (Ctrl+P)

Print the currently displayed document.

FilePrint Preview...

Show a preview of how the currently displayed document would be printed with the default options.

FileProperties

Display some basic information about the document, such as title, author, creation date, and details about the fonts used. The available information depends on the type of document.

FileEmbedded Files...

Show the files embedded in the document, if the document has any. For more information, see the section about the Embedded Files.

FileExport As

This item contains the export formats the current document can be exported to. The first entry for all kind of documents is always Plain Text...

The second entry is Document Archive, which allows you to save the document with your annotations into an Okular-specific archive format. Thus it is easily possible to share the original document and your annotations with other Okular users or work with them collaboratively.

FileShare

This item contains the services which can be used to share the current document with other people or send it to your devices. The entries in this sub-menu are controlled by the system. They depend on the current document format and the installed KPurpose plugins.

FileQuit (Ctrl+Q)

Close Okular.

The Edit Menu

The Edit Menu

EditUndo (Ctrl+Z)

Undo the last annotation editing command (creation and removal of annotations, editing arbitrary annotation properties, relocating annotations with Ctrl+drag, and editing the text contents of an annotation).

EditRedo (Ctrl+Shift+Z)

Redo the last undo step when editing annotations.

EditCopy (Ctrl+C)

Copy the currently selected text in Text Selection mode to the clipboard.

EditSelect All (Ctrl+A)

Selects all the text (if the document provides it). This works only in Text Selection mode.

EditFind... (Ctrl+F)

Show the find bar on the bottom of the viewing area that allows you to search for a string in the document.

EditFind Next (F3)

Try to find the previous searched string again in the document.

EditFind Previous (Shift+F3)

Goes to the previous occurrence of the search string in the document.

The View Menu

The View Menu

ViewPresentation (Ctrl+Shift+P)

Activates the Presentation Mode. For more information, see the section about Presentation Mode.

ViewZoom In (Ctrl++)

Increase the magnification of the document view.

ViewZoom Out (Ctrl+-)

Decrease the magnification of the document view.

ViewFit Width

Change the magnification of the document view to a value that makes the pages' width equal to the document view's width.

ViewFit Page

Change the magnification of the document view to a value that makes at least one whole page visible.

ViewAuto Fit

Change the magnification of the document view to a value that, depending on the size relation between the page and the view area, automatically either makes the pages' width equal to the document view's width (like fit-width), the pages' height equal to the document view's height (like fit-height), or the whole page visible (like fit-page).

ViewContinuous

Enable the continuous page mode. In continuous mode, all pages of the document are shown, and you can scroll through them without having to use the GoPrevious Page and GoNext Page options.

ViewView Mode

This submenu makes you choose the view mode for the pages. The possible options are: Single Page (only one page per row), Facing Pages (two pages per row, in a book style), Facing Pages (Center First Page) and Overview (the number of columns is the one specified in the Okular settings).

ViewOrientation

This submenu allows you to changes the orientation of the pages of the document.

Note

The rotation is applied to the orientation of every page.

You can select Original Orientation to restore the orientation of the document, discarding all the rotations applied manually.

ViewPage Size

Changes the size of the pages of the document.

Note

This submenu is active only if the current type of document supports different page sizes.

ViewTrim View

This submenu allows you to remove the white border of pages when viewing pages (Trim Margins item) or trim viewport to selection (Trim To Selection item).

The trim to selection mode allows you to draw a selection over the rendered page in order to define a visible bounding box to be applied to all pages in the document. Selecting a small trim bounding box enforces minimum dimensions size (20% as a percentage of total page size).

The trim margins mode is persistent across Okular restarts. The trim to selection mode is forgotten across Okular restarts.

When you switch Okular from trim margins mode to trim to selection mode, the view jumps out of trim margins mode for the bounding box selection interaction.

The trim mode can be deactivated by selecting the same menu item that activates it once again.

ViewShow/Hide Forms

Show or hides the display of the form fields of the document.

Note

This menu item is active only if the current document has form fields.

The Go Menu

The Go Menu

GoPrevious Page

View the previous page of the document.

GoNext Page

View the next page of the document.

GoBeginning of the document (Ctrl+Home)

Go to the beginning of the document.

GoEnd of the document (Ctrl+End)

Go to the end of the document.

GoBack (Alt+Shift+Left)

Go back to the previous view of the document.

GoForward (Alt+Shift+Right)

Move forward to the next view of the document. This only works if you have already moved back before.

GoGo to Page... (Ctrl+G)

Open a dialog which allows you to go to any page of the document.

The Bookmarks Menu

The Bookmarks Menu

BookmarksAdd/Remove Bookmark (Ctrl+B)

Add or remove a bookmark for the current position.

BookmarksRename Bookmark

Rename a bookmark for the current position.

BookmarksPrevious Bookmark

Go to the previous bookmark, or do nothing if there are no bookmarks prior to the current one.

BookmarksNext Bookmark

Go to the next bookmark, or do nothing if there are no bookmarks after the current one.

BookmarksNo Bookmarks

This is an always disabled action that appears in this menu only if the current document has no bookmarks. Otherwise a list of all bookmarks is displayed here. Clicking on these bookmarks allows you to go directly to the associated position.

The Tools Menu

The Tools Menu

ToolsBrowse Tool (Ctrl+1)

The mouse will have its normal behavior, left mouse button for dragging the document and following links and right mouse button for adding bookmarks and fit to width.

ToolsZoom Tool (Ctrl+2)

The mouse will work as a zoom tool. Clicking left mouse button and dragging will zoom the view to the selected area, clicking right mouse button will bring the document back to the previous zoom.

ToolsSelection Tool (Ctrl+3)

The mouse will work as a select tool. In that mode clicking left mouse button and dragging will give the option of copying the text/image of current selected area to the clipboard, speak a text or to save an image to a file.

ToolsText Selection Tool (Ctrl+4)

The mouse will work as a text selection tool. In that mode clicking left mouse button and dragging will give the option of selecting the text of the document. Then, just click with the right mouse button to copy to the clipboard or speak the current selection.

ToolsTable Selection Tool (Ctrl+5)

Draw a rectangle around the text for the table, then use the click with the left mouse button to divide the text block into rows and columns. A left mouse button click on a existing line removes it and merges the adjacent rows or columns.

ToolsMagnifier (Ctrl+6)

Activates the magnifier mode for the mouse pointer. Press and hold the left mouse button to activate magnifier widget, move the pointer for panning through the document. The magnifier scales each pixel in the document into 10 pixels in the magnifier widget.

ToolsReview (F6)

Open the review toolbar. The review toolbar allows you to add annotations on the document you are reading. For more information, please see the section about Annotations.

ToolsSpeak Whole Document , ToolsSpeak Current Page , ToolsStop Speaking

These items allow you to speak the whole document or just the current page and stop speaking using the KDE Text-to-Speech system Jovie.

The Speak ... actions are enabled only if Jovie is available in the system.

The Settings and Help Menu

The Settings and Help Menu

Apart from the common KDE Settings and Help menus described in the Menu chapter of the KDE Fundamentals documentation Okular has these application specific menu entries:

SettingsShow Navigation Panel (F7)

Toggle the navigation panel on and off.

SettingsShow Page Bar

Toggle the page bar at the bottom of document area on and off to save vertical place in Okular window.

SettingsFull Screen Mode (Ctrl+Shift+F)

Enables the full screen mode. Note that full screen mode is different from presentation mode insofar as the only peculiarity of full screen mode is that it hides the window decorations, the menubar and the toolbar.

SettingsConfigure Backends...

Opens the Backend Configuration window.

Chapter 5. Configuring Okular Backends

Chapter 5. Configuring Okular Backends

You can configure Okular backends by choosing SettingsConfigure Backends.... Currently, configuration options are provided for EPub, PostScript®, FictionBook, Txt, OpenDocument Text, and PDF backends only.

The backends configuration dialog

Using backend configuration pages for EPub, FictionBook, Txt and OpenDocument Text you can define the font to render documents in the corresponding formats. The Choose... button in these pages opens standard KDE font configuration window. Please refer to the KDE Fundamentals documentation for the details.

The description of PostScript® and PDF backends configuration pages can be found below.

PostScript® backend configuration

You can configure Okular PostScript® rendering backend based on Ghostscript by choosing Ghostscript from the list on the left part of the configuration dialog. The only configurable option is as follows.

Use platform fonts

This option determines whether Ghostscript should be allowed to use platform fonts, if unchecked only usage of fonts embedded in the document will be allowed. This option is checked by default.

PDF backend configuration

PDF backend configuration

You can configure Okular PDF rendering backend based on Poppler by choosing PDF from the list on the left part of the configuration dialog. The only configurable option is as follows.

Enhance thin lines

Drawing lines in Okular is implemented in two steps: generation of the clipping path and filling this clipping path. When the line in the original document is less than one pixel this two step implementation could cause problems. For those lines, the clipping path is filled with the filling color that depends on the thickness of the line part inside the clipping area. If the part of the line inside the clipping area gets very small the contrast between the shape and the background color can become too low for the line to be recognizable. The grids of such lines then looks very unpretty.

Thin line (red), its clipping path (dashed line) and pixel boundaries (black solid lines)Thin line shown at a low contrast

To enhance the look of the thin lines Okular implements two options.

The first option is Solid. With this option Okular adjusts clipping path and line position so that clipping path and line are on the same pixel boundary, i.e. Okular enlarges the thin lines to one pixel on the output device. This mode is similar to the Enhance thin lines in Adobe® Reader®. If this option is chosen, the thin lines are always enlarged.

Thin line with Solid enhancement

Thin line with Solid enhancement

The second option is Shape. With this option the clipping path and line are adjusted to pixel boundary as well, but the line intensity is corrected according to its width.

Thin line with Shape enhancement

Thin line with Shape enhancement

The thin lines are not enhanced by default (option No).

Chapter 6. Configuring Okular

Chapter 6. Configuring Okular

General configuration

You can configure Okular by choosing SettingsConfigure Okular.... The configuration dialog is split into six sections. This chapter describes the available options in detail.

The configuration dialog

Depending on the currently installed backends, the SettingsConfigure Backends... menu item could be enabled. This particular configuration dialog holds the configurations of the backends that can actually be configured.

General

General

Show scrollbars

Whether to show scrollbars for the document view.

Link the thumbnails with the page

Whether the thumbnails view should always display the current page or not.

Show hints and info messages

Whether to show some informative messages on startup, file load, etc.

Display document title in titlebar if available

Whether to show the current document title in the titlebar of Okular window. If no metadata for title found in the document or this item is unchecked Okular shows filename of the document.

When not displaying document title

You can choose any of two options, Display file name only or Display full file path.

Use custom background color

Enables choosing the document background color (the color around the displayed page). By default, the Qt™ toolkit color is used when this option is unchecked.

Open new files in tabs

Whether to open new documents in tabs. The tabs are disabled by default.

The default shortcuts to switch between tabs are Ctrl+. (Next tab) and Ctrl+, (Previous tab).

Obey DRM limitations

Whether Okular should obey DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions. DRM limitations are used to make it impossible to perform certain actions with PDF documents, such as copying content to the clipboard. Note that in some configurations of Okular, this option is not available.

Reload document on file change

Whether opened files should be automatically checked for changes and updated, if necessary.

Show backend selection dialog

Whether Okular should ask the user which backend to use in case of more than one backend able to open the current file. If unchecked, Okular will use the backend with the highest priority.

Right to left reading direction

Whether to use right to left reading direction by default for the opened files. Can be useful for some writing systems.

Overview columns

This option represents the number of columns to use in the overview mode.

Page Up/Down overlap

Here you can define the percentage of the current viewing area that should be visible after pressing Page Up/Page Down keys.

Default Zoom

This options specifies the default zoom mode for file which were never opened before. For those files which were opened before the previous zoom mode is applied.

Accessibility

Accessibility

Draw border around links

Whether to draw a border around links.

Change colors

Enables the color changing options.

Invert Colors

Inverts colors on the view, i.e. black objects will be shown white.

Change Paper Color

Changes the paper's color, i.e. the document's background.

Change Dark & Light Colors

Changes the dark and light color to your preference, that means black will not be rendered as black but as the selected dark color and white will not be rendered as white but as the selected light color.

Convert to Black & White

Converts the document to black and white. You can set the threshold and the contrast. Setting the threshold to a higher value by moving it to the right will result in lighter grays used.

Performance

Performance

Enable transparency effects

Draw selections and other special graphics using transparency effects. Disable the option to draw them using outline or opaque fill styles and increase speed on selections.

Memory Usage

Okular can achieve best performance by tuning the memory usage, based on your system and your tastes. The more memory you let it to use, the faster the program will behave. The Default profile is good for every system, but you can prevent Okular from using more memory than necessary by selecting the Low profile, or let it get the most out of your system using Aggressive. Use Greedy profile to preload all pages without risk of system memory overfull (only 50% of total memory or free memory will be used).

Rendering

Using this group of options you can improve text and image rendering in Okular. The result depends on the device to display the document. Enable Text Antialias and Enable Graphics Antialias items can be used to switch on and off spatial anti-aliasing of text and images in document, correspondingly. Enable Text Hinting item is meant to be a switcher for font hinting. Antialiasing and hinting change how the documents are displayed, you may want to tweak them to your preference.

Presentation

Presentation

Advance every

Enables automatic advancing of pages given a time period.

Loop after last page

When navigating on presentation mode and going past the last page the first page will appear.

Background color

The color that will fill the part of the screen not covered by the page when on presentation mode.

Mouse cursor

Whether the mouse should be always hidden, always shown or hidden after a small time of inactivity.

Show progress indicator

Whether to show a progress circle that shows the current page and the total number of pages on the upper right corner of the presentation screen every time you change the page.

Show summary page

Whether to show a summary page at the beginning of the presentation with the title, author and number of pages of the document.

Enable transitions

Use this check box to enable or disable transition effects between pages.

Default transition

The transition effect between page and page if the document does not specify one. Set this to Random Transition to make Okular randomly choose one of the available effects.

Placement

In this section you can select the Screen used to display the presentation.

Current Screen is same screen of the Okular window that starts the presentation mode.

Default Screen is the screen marked as default in the xinerama configuration.

Screen 0, Screen 1 etc. are the available screens.

Drawing Tool Configuration

Manage the colors of the pencil used when drawing on the pages during the presentation mode.

Annotations

Annotations

The Annotations page of the configuration dialog
Author

The author of the contents added on a document. Default is the name from the Password & User Account page of the System Settings module Account Details.

Annotation tools

This pane is used to configure your annotating toolbar.

There are five buttons (Add, Edit, Remove, Move Up, Move Down) and a list box (which lists the contents of the current annotating toolbar) which are used to configure the toolbar.

If you need to add some tool button on the toolbar click on the Add button. You can choose the Name, the Type and the Appearance of the created tool.

Note

Please remember that annotation tools in Okular are highly configurable. For example, you can have two buttons of the same tool but with different color. Do not hesitate to experiment in choosing the button set that is exactly tailored to your workflow.

Click on some item in the list box then click on the corresponding button at the right part of the page to edit, remove, move up or move down the item. The keyboard shortcut of the tool (keys from 1 to 9) depends on its position in the list of annotating toolbar.

Using Custom Stamps
  1. Create the icon you want to use for your own stamp and save it in any graphics format supported by Okular

  2. Click the Add button, select type Stamp and enter a name for your stamp.

  3. Enter the full path to your custom icon into the dropdown box in the Stamp Symbol group

Editor

Editor

Editor

Choose the editor you want to launch when Okular wants to open a source file. This is the case when the document has references to the various points (usually row and column number) of sources it was generated from. The DVI format supports natively the addition of the information about the sources the LaTeX document was generated from. A similar system exists for PDF documents, called pdfsync, which stores these extra information in an external file named after the PDF file itself (for example mydocument.pdfsync for mydocument.pdf).

Okular ships with preconfigured settings for the following editors: Kate, Kile, SciTE, Emacs client, and LyX client.

Note

To use inverse search in Kile, you have to compile your LATEX file with the Modern configuration.

Command

This is the command and its parameters to invoke the selected editor with the source file of the actual document.

This field will be filled automatically if you use one of the preconfigured editors. Otherwise, please choose Custom Text Editor in Editor drop down box and refer to the documentation on your favorite editor to find the proper command.

You can use the following placeholders:

  • %f - the file name

  • %l - the line of the file to be reached

  • %c - the column of the file to be reached

If %f is not specified, then the document name is appended to the specified command.

Chapter 7. Credits and License

Chapter 7. Credits and License

Program Copyright:

  • Albert Astals Current maintainer

  • Pino Toscano

  • Enrico Ros KPDF developer

Documentation Copyright:

  • Albert Astals Author

  • Titus Laska Some updates and additions

  • Pino Toscano

This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.