Preview on hover in pre-release 3.7

[kjk]

@koppor implemented preview of citations, figures etc. triggered by mouse hover to SumatraPDF pre-release 3.7. Here's how it works:

sumatrapdf-hover-preview-tutorial.mp4

Available in latest pre-release

It's using heuristics to pick which part to show in preview, so issues with suggestions on how to improve it on specific documents is encouraged.

[kjk]

On youtube:

[MnguniCoder]

How do I disable the setting ?

[kjk]

Two ways to turn it off:

Command palette (quickest)

Press Ctrl+K, type hover, and run Toggle Hover Preview. That switches the feature off (and back on with the default delay if you run it again).

Advanced setting

Open Settings → Advanced Options… (or Ctrl+K → type adv → Advanced Options…), find CitationHoverDelay, and set:

CitationHoverDelay = -1

Save the file. -1 disables the hover popup. The default is 300 (milliseconds before the preview appears). You can use any positive number if you want a longer or shorter delay instead of disabling it entirely.

[rgbmrc]

This is tremendously convenient! Would it be possible to have the pop-up persist if the mouse moves over it and allow clicking links within the preview? That would be particularly useful for opening references in paper bibliographies.

[koppor]

Tools are listed at https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/52252/pdf-viewer-with-hyperlink-preview

Sioyek latest binary uses active right click (which I find inconvenient). Scrolling in the popup is with the mouse wheel. Strl+Wheel zooms the PDF (not the preview).

Evince and PDFRefPreview both show popup on hover, no zoom/scroll possible. Mouse wheel closes popup.

PR: #5721
(I will work on it now)

[kjk]

@koppor not sure how well you know sioyek. I've been thinking about stealing their best ideas but I haven't used it myself so only know superficially, from reading their docs etc.

If you have an opinion about what features from sioyek we should implement in SumatraPDF, I would love to know. Preferably open an issue for each distinct feature and provide enough context so that it's easy to feed to claude to implement and for me to know what to test.

This extends to all other readers: if they have good ideas I didn't think of, I do want to adopt them.

[koppor]

Their tutorial as well as their README.md show the features. Ah, and there is a long tutorial as well as a short 1min overview.

For me, Sioyek seems to be very keyboard driven and vi inspired ("operators")... On the one hand, I am not sure whether there should be different keyboard modes? On the other hand, "know your tools" and efficient tool use with keyboard only could be very nice. 😅

I am currently watching the long YT video and I will open some issues from the Sioyek video which I could miss from SumatraPDF (and did not quickly find in the docs)

[kjk]

Generally speaking, we're restricted in replicating exact behavior (like keyboard shortcuts) by backwards compatibility.

We could have separate set of key bindings to emulate e.g. sioyek, as long as they can be expressed by simply re-binding shortcuts to commands.

So:

• if doesn't break backwards compatibility, we can implement the feature as is
• if would break backwards compatibility we can adopt the feature to SumatraPDF
• we could add sioyek emulation mode if we implement their features and use their keybindings

An example of adopting a feature is Ctrl + k, * that I added recently to navigate toc/bookmarks via keyboard.

[koppor]

Sioyek has the feature of a "Portal", which enables linking something internally or externally - and then viewing like the hover.... - I think: fancy, but will barely be used. I think, two windows and manual jump is OK.

Think, that behavior can be emulated by using favourites (under cursor) - no need to have an extra link thing - even though, I like the concept of hyperlinks. Sidetrack: https://hookproductivity.com/help/general/features/