SUMMARY When opening a document that is already open, I would expect Okular to jump to the already open document. The default behavior seems to be to open any document in a new window (or tab if tabs are turned on). I also tried the --unique flag but that does not lead to the desire beavior.
There is an option to do this in the settings window. Personally I agree with you and I think it should be the default behavior, to match the typical behavior in other apps. Albert, would you be open to the possibility of changing the default setting here?
We've been with this behaviour for decades and we've had like 2 reports about it, i'm not super sure that is a great indication for "the default is wrong", but I don't really care.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/graphics/okular/-/merge_requests/370
Git commit d0b9b138cc352b6af1dc0bb8427cfc1608b7ac30 by Nate Graham. Committed on 17/03/2021 at 16:00. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'release/21.04'. Switch to existing document in new tab by default Right now Okular defaults to opening an already-open document in a new tab when opened a second time, which is a bit odd. Most other document-based apps will switch to the existing document's instance instead of opening a new instance of it. Interestingly enough, Okular has an option to do this, but it's off by default. I think on by default makes more sense here, to be consistent with other document-based apps. Since the option exists, people who have a specialized use case that commonly involves opening multiple instances of the same document can toggle the option to have that. Everyone wins! FIXED-IN: 21.04 M +1 -1 conf/okular.kcfg M +1 -1 doc/index.docbook https://invent.kde.org/graphics/okular/commit/d0b9b138cc352b6af1dc0bb8427cfc1608b7ac30