On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 1:58 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I have a PDF filename named "RE: something.pdf"

This fails:
        evince "RE: someting.pdf"
with the error messages on stdout:
        ** (evince:397922): WARNING **: 11:14:02.077: The specified location is not supported
        ** (evince:397922): WARNING **: 11:14:02.080: set_filenames: The specified location is not supported

The message in the evince window is more interesting:
        Unable to open document “file:///tmp/evince-397922/document.SR35V0-
        something”.

        The specified location is not supported.

Clearly evince is trying to treat the prefix "RE:" as something magic. 
Just what, I don't know.  But it sure isn't in the evince man page.

This command works fine:
        evince ./"RE: someting.pdf"


Why not simply rename the file to something.pdf ?

I just tested and the command(s) below works:
mv 'RE: something.pdf' something.pdf && evince something.pdf && mv something.pdf 'RE: something.pdf'

unless of course there is a real need to have it work using evince "RE: someting.pdf"?