A session saver for opened PDF documents

This repository contains a zsh script that saves and opens sessions of with a number of PDF files. It also has some abilities to manage these sessions (list, rename, open the most recent, remove).

I often find myself with a considerable number of opened PDF files. It is pretty uncommon for them to be on the same folder or have any other relating feature other than that I need them at that moment. Then comes the time that I need to close them, for whatever reason I may have. Later at some point I want to open the same set of PDF files but I don't remember their filenames, their paths nor the exact number of files I had. I was lost.

This script creates a zsh function, named roz, that uses the content of /proc/*/fd to determine the name and path of opened PDF files. It then creates a script that can be executed later with roz open. You can create sessions, list them, remove them and rename them.

Installation

Save the script roz.zsh, for example in ~/.zsh/, and source it in your .zshrc

source /path/to/roz.zsh

Then create the directory ~/.rz-sessions

mkdir ~/.rz-sessions

You can use a different directory, just change the variable ROZDIR to use the directory of your choice.

Usage

If you issue the command roz without arguments you will see some usage information. The available arguments are

s, save        save a session
o, open        open a saved session
la, last       open the most recently saved/opened session
ls, list       show information about saved sessions
mv, move 'name' 'new name'    rename a session
rm, remove 'name'             remove session matching session name

Optionally, you can name the session by providing a name of your choice

roz s my-session

and later reopen it with the open command plus the same name

roz o my-session

If you do not provide a name for the session it is saved under the name default. This is the session that opens when you execute roz open or roz o without extra arguments. The default session is overwritten every time you execute roz save or roz s without a session name and some PDF files opened. If you want to preserve the current default session but save another default session, you can rename the current default session by using the move command

roz move default 'new-name'
roz mv default 'new-name'

Where 'new-name' is a name of your choice. Then you can have a new default session and the old-default session can be opened by roz o 'new-name'

Configuration

Currently you can configure the script trough variables contained in the script. These variables are:

ROZDIR: select the folder to store the sessions and other data related to last opened/saved session. By default it uses the directory ~/.rz-sessions that you need to create manually.

LAST: rule to determine the session to be used with the command last/la. The options are

• opened: open the last session opened with the command roz open or roz o,
• saved: open the last session saved with the command roz save or roz s,
• any: open either the last saved or opened session according to which one was executed last.

By default the option any is selected. The command last tries to work even if you rename the corresponding session.

PDFVIEW: write the command that will be used to open the PDF files. It will be used in the sessions saved after changing it. Sessions saved before changing it will need to be recreated (This may change in the future to always use the chosen PDF viewer without the need to recreate sessions). The default is xdg-open.