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Re: Reading pdf files



Quoting k. jantzen (2019-06-13 16:29:27)
> in general I do not have a problem reading a pdf file with either xpdf 
> or documentviewer.
> 
> But once in a while I get a pdf file that they cannot read and then I 
> have to go to Windows to open it.
> 
> What is so spectacular about these files that they cannot be read by 
> the above mentioned programs?

PDF is a big complex data format, and several things could have gone 
wrong, including the file being broken (but in a way that some 
commercial viewers handle more graceful than what you tried on Linux) 
and the files using features from newer revisions of PDF than is 
implemented in those Linux viewers.

> Is there another program that would read such a file?

There are many PDF viewers in Debian.  Probably best way to sift through 
them is to install the package apt-xapian-index and run these:

  axi-cache search pdf viewer
  axi-cache more


When your interest is in what PDF files the applications can render, 
then you need not try them all but can check which underlying PDF 
rendering library they use which are far more limited.

Evince (a.k.a. "documentviewer"), Xpdf, Okular, Atril, Qpdfview and 
others use Poppler:

  apt rdepends libpoppler*

Gv and others use Ghostscript:

  apt rdepends libgs9 ghostscript ghostscript-x

MuPDF uses its own renderer (developed by same authors as Ghostscript 
but an independent codebase):

  apt rdepends qpdf

PDF.js is used in some web browsers:

  apt rdepends pdf.js-common libjs-pdf

latexdraw (more a programming tool than a viewer) uses The PDF Renderer.

  apt rdepends libpdfrenderer-java

Calibre and others use PoDoFo:

  apt rdepends libpodofo*

CUPS filters (for printing not a viewer) use QPDF:

  apt rdepends libqpdf*


 - Jonas

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

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