Can view_command correctly handle quotations?

[mil-ad]

So I'm trying to set up a new view_command for macOS to open PDFs using PDF Expert. My view_command looks like below but it doesn't work:

"osx" : {
     "view_command": "open -a \"PDF Expert\""
 },

When I replace it with "open -a Preview" it works fine so I guess it's something to do with the fact that the name of the app has spaces in it and needs to be in quotations.

I also tried "open -a PDF\ Expert" but it doesn't work either.

Am I doing something wrong?

[mil-ad]

If I rename the app to PDFExpert and use "view_command": "open -a PDFExpert" then everything works fine so it must be something to do with the name.

[ig0774]

I strongly suspect this is due to the internal metadata PDF Expert reports to macOS. I can run open -a "Google Chrome" (for example) as a viewer command perfectly well. Unfortunately, I don’t have the $60 to install the app from the App Store and I’m not willing to run their installer on my machine so I can’t test this out, but I suspect you can use open -a PDFExpert without renaming the app and it will work.

[mil-ad]

Actually Google Chrome is a good example because that doesn't work for me either. Could you please share your viewer command for chrome?

[ig0774]

It's just this:

"viewer": "command",
"viewer_settings": {
	"osx": {
		"view_command": "open -a \"Google Chrome\""
	}
}

[mil-ad]

Interesting, that does not work for me.

[ig0774]

That's weird... Some questions / things to try:

1. Do you use a shell other than bash? (If that question's meaningless to you, the answer is no).
2. If you open the console you should see a line something like the one below. Do you see this line?

Running "open -a 'PDF Expert' /some/path/here"

3. Does running open -a "PDF Expert" /path/to/your/pdffile.pdf do what you expect when run from the Terminal app?

[mil-ad]

1. I use zsh. I tried spawning Sublime from bash but doesn't seem to make a difference
2. I do:
   Running "open -a '"Google Chrome"' '/some/path/file.pdf'"
3. Yes that works fine in a zsh terminal

Looking at the console, I think the problem is in those additional single quotes

[Isolus]

It's an issue with this line:

LaTeXTools/viewers/command_viewer.py

Line 113 in 9aa34a0

command = shlex.split(command, False, False)

Here is some sample output:

>>> shlex.split("open -a \"Google Chrome\"", False, False)
['open', '-a', '"Google Chrome"']

You can use the following instead:

>>> shlex.split("open -a \"Google Chrome\"", False)
['open', '-a', 'Google Chrome']

[nscaife]

I'm also having this issue. Should I submit a PR with the fix @Isolus suggested?

[mil-ad]

YES YES