Re: RFS: xpdf (updated package)
Hi, Jakub.
On Jun 03 2010, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> * Rogério Brito <rbrito@ime.usp.br>, 2010-06-03, 14:43:
> >I have been keeping in touch with Michael about such smaller
> >version of xpdf and, in fact, I started a xpdf-poppler project,
>
> Count me as one who won't use such a bastardized version of xpdf.
Thank you very much for your warm reception. :-)
,----[ dict bastard ]
| 8 definitions found
| (...)
|
| From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
|
| Bastard \Bas"tard\, a.
| 1. Begotten and born out of lawful matrimony; illegitimate.
| See {Bastard}, n., note.
| [1913 Webster]
|
| 2. Lacking in genuineness; spurious; false; adulterate; --
| applied to things which resemble those which are genuine,
| but are really not so.
| [1913 Webster]
|
| That bastard self-love which is so vicious in
| itself, and productive of so many vices. --Barrow.
| [1913 Webster]
| (...)
`----
One can argue that both of these meanings *do* apply to xpdf. In fact,
xpdf is, right now, more or less abandoned by its upstream and while
very precious, it would need addressing many of its problems.
People would not have the need of a project in the veins of poppler
otherwise.
> Font handling in poppler is brain-dead (see bug #528808) and xpdf
Just as a notice here:
* it works perfectly well here with my setup and xpdf-poppler;
* the document doesn't embed fonts, which is disapproved by (almost)
everyone---I do that myself, since it is allowed, but I do know that
many people may have problems otherwise;
* it may not be apparent, but I am a person that lives by TeX.
Besides that, it seems to work fine with poppler5 here and if you had no
response from the poppler maintainer in Debian, that's perhaps a problem
that should, indeed, be addressed.
> serves me currently as a "is-this-PDF-broken-or-is-it-only-poppler"
> tester.
You may be exaggerating here, since xpdf is not very strict in its
adherence to the PDF standard. I don't even know if Adobe's reader
follows the definition of the standard.
I would welcome, though, any patches, suggestions, or even brainstorms
etc to xpdf-poppler.
I know that you are qualifed enough to work with pdf and djvu files
based on your work with packages like pdf2djvu, ocrodjvu and similars
(and I have nothing but thank you once again for your work on that).
Thanks, Rogério Brito.
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
http://rb.doesntexist.org : Packages for LaTeX : algorithms.berlios.de
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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