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Re: Reading pdf files



On 13.06.19 16:29, k. jantzen wrote:
> 
> in general I do not have a problem reading a pdf file with either xpdf or
> documentviewer.

Yup, documentviewer will sometimes show faint lines better, I find, but
it's easy to set the background colour in xpdf.

> 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?

That varies, and a reader with good error messages is the easiest way to
find out.

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

Well, given s/would/could, try mupdf:

$ apt-cache search mupdf
mupdf - lightweight PDF viewer
mupdf-tools - commmand line tools for the MuPDF viewer
libmupdf-dev - development files for the MuPDF viewer

In my case, a pdf certificate from a state authority displayed the logo
and signature in xpdf, but none of the text - not much use at all.

A quick install of mupdf not only allowed the whole document to be
displayed, but issued (a squillion times) the following error message on
stderr:

Error: Couldn't create a font for 'ABCDEE+Calibri,Bold'
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...

after an initial:

Error: PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table...

I only use mupdf for problem pdf files, but it's very nifty to have on
hand.

Erik


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