Vim pdf viewer blocking the terminal

Question

When I call the command command ViewPdf !okular %:r.pdf  on Vim (in .vimrc), the terminal is blocked and I cannot continue writing my document.How can i tweake this vim command to open my pdfviewer and let me write the text in vim? I tried this options already:
command ViewPdf !okular %:r.pdf &
command ViewPdf !okular %:r.pdf & disown
command ViewPdf !okular %:r.pdf && disown

[Edit-1]: I don't want to use plugins to do this. I have a pretty sh** machine so I want to avoid adding things to my runtime, if possible
[Edit-2]:  my .vimrc file:
   command ViewPdf execute "!okular %:r.pdf &" | redraw  
   command CompileXelatex !xelatex  -interaction=nonstopmode %
   command CompileLatex !latexmk -pdfxe %

Skillmon · Answer

The trick is to let the reader fork into the background silently and redraw in VIM:

:command ViewPdf execute "silent !okular %:r.pdf&" | redraw!

This uses execute so that only the things in the quotes after the exclamation mark are passed to the shell and the | redraw! is interpreted by VIM.

The redraw might not always be necessary (I'm actually not sure when it really is), so instead just

:command ViewPdf silent !okular %:r.pdf&

might work as well.

Alternatively, you could as well solve this with a mapping, e.g.,

:nmap <leader>s :silent ! okular %:r.pdf&<cr> :redraw!<cr>

This will define the key combination <leader>s to open okular for you in normal mode. <leader> uses the key which is stored in mapleader (by default a backslash, you can use :let mapleader = "," to make it a comma instead for example).

Vim pdf viewer blocking the terminal

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