View PDF with "fit to page size" by default

Question

Whenever I open a PDF file in Ubuntu, the document viewer shows that file zoomed so that the page width fits to the screen width (and the lower part of the document is not visible). Due to the large monitor I would really prefer to have it show the full document with a smaller zoom instead (I think that might be called "fit to page size" in English).

I found no preference in the document viewer to change its startup behaviour. Is there any preference for that which I missed? Are there alternative PDF viewers which can be configured to fulfill my needs or which have this setting as default?

Thanks for any suggestion.

Solution

Evince (default PDF viewer) should automatically remember individual display settings for different documents. However, in 10.04, there doesn't appear to be a preference for the default view mode.

In Ubuntu 10.10+ (GNOME 2.30+), Evince has an option on the Edit menu for this: "Save current settings as default".

In that case you would change the zoom to Best Fit and set up all of your display preferences, and then activate that option which would apply to future documents. There are other PDF viewers out there that also do this, but I haven't found any as simple to use as Evince.

Comments

[Bananeweizen]

I just tested that in a virtual machine - works as described. I can wait until the distribution update.

[Matt Joiner]

You are my saviour. This has plagued me for 2 years of Ubuntu use, just yesterday I upgraded to 10.10.

[Stack Underflow]

The same option is available for Atril Document Viewer.