Bug#847462: the problem is with CUPS
On Fri 03 Mar 2017 at 20:28:56 +0200, Martin-Éric Racine wrote:
> 2017-03-03 18:25 GMT+02:00 Francesco Potortì <Potorti@isti.cnr.it>:
>
> > This apparently has to do with the old problem of cups-pdf converting
> > PDF to PS and back to PDF.
> >
> > I have an old Ubuntu Lucid installation where the problem does not
> > exist.
>
> Debian and Ubuntu both briefly used a patch (around version 2.5.1
> IIRC) that bypassed the pdf2pdf filter. It worked well for simply
> passing documents that were already in PDF format over to CUPS for
> output to a PDF spool. However, it completely broke CUPS-PDF's
> primary functionality which is to convert arbitrary document formats
> into PDF, and it also prevented users from further manipulating the
> documents via CUPS-PDF's configuration file options before outputting
> them to the PDF spool. This resulted in complaints from users who
> depended upon these features, so I removed the patch.
The fullest discussion of this I know of is at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups-pdf/+bug/820820
Users should take note of the comment:
> The reasons for not skipping this step are known to you
> (it will severly impede the functionality of CUPS-PDF).
> Furthermore, once again, CUPS-PDF is not meant for
> processing PDF-input (i.e., it is not meant to be a
> PDF-manipulation tool).
However, cups-pdf is still seen as a general "convert something to a
PDF" utility. At one time it might have served that purpose, but not
now. Both text and PDF input produce a below-standard, non-searchable
output. There is a case for clarifying its purpose as a cups-filters
plus backend method for getting a decent quality, searchable PDF from
PostScript input only. (Okular produces PostScript; Evince doesn't).
--
Brian.
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