Evince doesn't appear on Launcher or Alt+Tab

[Amr Ibrahim]

Evince doesn't appear on Launcher or Alt+Tab (see screenshot).

Unity version: 5.12-0ubuntu1.1

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: evince 3.4.0-0ubuntu1.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-27.43-generic 3.2.21
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-27-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu11
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jul 29 17:04:03 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/evince/evinced
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
KernLog:

ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SourcePackage: evince
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Leland Woodbury (leland-g)]

It's been almost 4 months since this bug was confirmed. Any updates? It's pretty frustrating to be filling out a form in evince, navigate to another window, and then not be able to get the evince window back. [As an aside: Is there a way to retrieve a window that isn't visible on either the dash or Alt-Tab? perhaps by using the process id?]

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

On 02/12/2012 16:39, Leland Woodbury wrote:
> It's been almost 4 months since this bug was confirmed. Any updates?
> It's pretty frustrating to be filling out a form in evince, navigate to
> another window, and then not be able to get the evince window back. [As
> an aside: Is there a way to retrieve a window that isn't visible on
> either the dash or Alt-Tab? perhaps by using the process id?]
>
I agree, it's been a while since anyone has noticed this bug. And yes,
you can retrieve it using the spread view (super+w). BTW, "super" is the
"Windows" key.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. That's an unity/bamf issue not an evince one... does it happen often? Do you have steps to trigger the issue? That's not a common issue, not sure what is special about your setup which makes it happen for you though

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

Actually it doesn't happen very often. I don't think there are specific steps or special setup to trigger it. At least this is what I think.

[Leland Woodbury (leland-g)]

Hmmm. Amr seems to be correct. I cannot reproduce the problem now, even with the same file that I was working with when I previously reported. If I see a recurrence, I'll try to capture the necessary conditions and report back. [Amr, thanks for the Super-W tip, didn't know that one!] And yes, Sebastien, I reckon that Unity is the likely culprit, I've seen several examples of flaky Unity behavior. Thanks for the follow-up.

[stianst (stianst)]

I have this problem quite regularly with gnome-terminal. I've also noticed it in the past with other apps, but not recently. Afraid I haven't been able to reliably reproduce it either

[Petteri Aimonen (jpa-lp)]

Just got this issue (with evince). If anyone can suggest any useful information I can collect when the issue is happening, please tell.

[Petteri Aimonen (jpa-lp)]

Found out two things:

1) Using gdb, I found that evince is not in the SwitcherModel._inner vector. It has only 5 entries, which correspond to the desktop icon and 4 other applications I had running. It seems that evince is not in LauncherModel either, but there is one unity::launcher::BamfLauncherIcon with empty tooltip so I cannot be sure. This unknown icon persists after killing all evince processes.

It seems that the new evince window doesn't trigger the LauncherController::RegisterIcon like it should. I don't have a second computer at the moment so I can only debug with core files (i.e. no breakpoints).

2) There were some background evince processes running:
30251 pts/1 00:00:15 evince
30255 ? 00:00:00 evinced

After I ran 'killall evince', those processes disappeared. Restarting evince after that made the icon appear normally on both launcher and switcher.

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

Can you still reproduce this issue? Lot of fixes went into BAMF, so I'm pretty sure it has been fixed.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

No, I don't reproduce it in trusty. I think it's fixed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Unity because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Abhijit (abhi-ghsh)]

The way I reproduced this problem:

1) Unlock evince icon from the launcher.
2) Open any pdf document using evince. You will notice the icon for the opened application does not appear in the launcher.
3) Navigate to any other open window/application. You will not get back to evince using ALT+TAB

You need to keep evince icon added in launcher to prevent this problem from happening.