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Re: Most popular packages currently missing on the lenny-test DVD



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On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 07:55:37PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On Dienstag, 7. April 2009, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
>> We already discussed the PDF viewer situation earlier, see
>> <URL: http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2008/02/msg00196.html > for
>> that thread.
>
>There were even bugs filed in the BTS (without edu usertags though) and 
>some fixed in poppler, and afaik forms support in kpdf and evince is 
>much better than it used to be. So I was really a bit shocked/sad when 
>I read that KDE4 has a new pdf viewer without forms support...

Shocked based on rumors or on facts?

In the earlier thread I asked for actual test cases, but received none.

Since then there has been major updates on Poppler and (for printing) 
ghostscript.  I have recently become more involved in maintaining 
ghostscript for Debian, and have a background in professional prepress 
industry that perhaps might be helpful in understanding some of the 
issues.

Okular is based on Poppler, so is not a start from scratch but an 
extension to existing work.

I have now installed Okular (ugh: 178MB download, as I do not use KDE!), 
and contrary to at least xpdf and evince, it seems to actually handle 
forms to some extend.  I have no idea if the form fill-out is usable for 
anything - please someone provide me a concrete test scenario for form 
fillout quality testing!

Any other PDF viewers relevant to test, in addition to the following?:

  * Xpdf
  * Evince
  * epdfview
  * Okular
  * Acroread
  * PDFCube
  * Viewpdf.app
  * KPDF
  * Read (Sugar activity - not yet packaged)



Here's the issues I consider relevant to test for:


fpdf (a.k.a. PDF forms)
- -----------------------

I found this bugreport, containing 2 test files triggering different 
problems regarding forms: http://bugs.kde.org/161327


Color profile handling
- ----------------------

A good start is this test: http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter


Heavy graphics
- --------------

José (or was it someone else?) mentioned in the earlier thread that 
Acrobat was 3 times faster to browse graphics-heavy PDF files.

Any good tests for that?  Any suggestions how to test that so as to 
avoid the tests becoming too subjective?


Fonts
- -----

Use of double-byte CJK fonts cause crashes and other surprises.  I am in 
possesion of a crash test from private correspondence related to a 
ghostscript bug, but cannot publish that one, unfortunately.

I seldom (to say the least) use japanese fonts myself and need good 
sample tests...

Other font-related problems?  Sample tests?


Printing
- --------

Someone mentioned problems with Acroread(!) using custom margins.

Test cases?  Other issues?


Other problems
- --------------

Please speak up!  What is known to not work in some PDF readers?  Please 
provide sample files!


Kind regards,

  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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