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phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

pdf readers hang and/or display improperly

ok, well I have a slew of docs in pdf format.
when I try to read any of them, i get the following:

gpdf - window opens, X and children hang... requires ctrl+alt+backspace to remedy (even explicitly killing the gpdf process does nothing)
acroread - similar as above, except killing the process seems to jsut swap it out (acroread becomes "[acroread] (defunct)")
xpdf - seems slow and clunky, and will not display text... i get lines and images and boxes.

the only thing that comes to mind is the fact that I am running an SMP kernel (stock) with P4 Hyperthreading...

anyone else have something similar? I cannot seem to track the problem down as 2 of the 3 seem to hang my system hard...

if anything, I could always get a good pdf2* program to just convert them... blegh

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http://phraktured.net

Kalidor

Member

Registered: 2004-06-18

Posts: 80

Re: pdf readers hang and/or display improperly

xpdf - seems slow and clunky, and will not display text... i get lines and images and boxes.

You probably have to edit /etc/xpdfrc. Try this one:

displayFontT1 Times-Roman        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021003l.pfb
displayFontT1 Times-Italic        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021023l.pfb
displayFontT1 Times-Bold        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021004l.pfb
displayFontT1 Times-BoldItalic        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n021024l.pfb
displayFontT1 Helvetica                /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019003l.pfb
displayFontT1 Helvetica-Oblique            /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019023l.pfb
displayFontT1 Helvetica-Bold        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019004l.pfb
displayFontT1 Helvetica-BoldOblique    /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n019024l.pfb
displayFontT1 Courier            /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022003l.pfb
displayFontT1 Courier-Oblique        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022023l.pfb
displayFontT1 Courier-Bold        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022004l.pfb
displayFontT1 Courier-BoldOblique    /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/n022024l.pfb
displayFontT1 Symbol            /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/s050000l.pfb
displayFontT1 ZapfDingbats        /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/d050000l.pfb

textEncoding        UTF-8

enableT1lib        yes
enableFreeType    yes
antialias        yes

Have you tried Ghostscript?

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: pdf readers hang and/or display improperly

gv can display pdf

Also, you can use pdf2ps to convert them in postscript.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: pdf readers hang and/or display improperly

thanks guys, I will mess with this tonight...

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http://phraktured.net

Kalidor

Member

Registered: 2004-06-18

Posts: 80

Re: pdf readers hang and/or display improperly

gv can display pdf

Also, you can use pdf2ps to convert them in postscript.

Yes, but gv is just one of many frontends to Ghostscript. pdf2ps also comes with Ghostscript.

And while we're at it, gpdf is based on xpdf. So basically there are, apart from Adobe's reader, two PDF rendering engines in Linux that I know of: xpdf and Ghostscript.

dp

Member

From: Zürich, Switzerland

Registered: 2003-05-27

Posts: 3,378

Website

Re: pdf readers hang and/or display improperly

if you want bitmap output, gimp can import pdf's

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The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.