 Evince / Poppler Experiences, as PDF viewer alternative |
OESF Forums > Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums > Distro Support and Discussion > pdaXrom  |
 Nov 16 2006, 02:34 AM
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#1
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 Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 28-April 05 From: Germany Member No.: 7,027  |
Hello,
I just tried the Evince IPK version compiled by Meanie. (http://zaurus.daemons.gr/menaie/pdaxrom/feed/contribs/evince_0.4.0_armv5tel.ipk) It works quite nicely but is very slow when loading documents with images and slow and instable when zooming such documents. Is there anything I should take care of whenhandling PDFs with Evince? What are others' experiences? I'm currently trying to compile the latest version of Evince and poppler. Maybe this will help. daniel |
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Nov 16 2006, 03:19 AM
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#2
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 Group: Members Posts: 1,497 Joined: 12-November 03 From: Germany Member No.: 907 |
might give epdfView a try. It's also based on poppler, but more lightweight.
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Nov 16 2006, 04:04 AM
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#3
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Group: Members Posts: 281 Joined: 9-August 06 Member No.: 10,709 |
tbh, I've not found any of the pdf viewers that work on pdaxrom to be any good, one of the worst problems is that to view a page of text where the line width fits on the screen, you must use a zoom level making the font too hard to read.
It would be great to have a reader that allowed you to change the font to something readable, and not forcing you to use the original page width (line breaks) would be very nice. |
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Nov 16 2006, 04:11 AM
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#4
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 Group: Members Posts: 1,014 Joined: 4-January 05 From: Enschede, The Netherlands Member No.: 6,107 |
QUOTE(zi99y @ Nov 16 2006, 12:04 PM) It would be great to have a reader that allowed you to change the font to something readable, and not forcing you to use the original page width (line breaks) would be very nice.  That goes against the whole idea of pdf documents, but I can see how such a feature can come in handy. |
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Nov 16 2006, 04:36 AM
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#5
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Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 28-April 05 From: Germany Member No.: 7,027 |
QUOTE(koen @ Nov 16 2006, 02:11 PM) QUOTE(zi99y @ Nov 16 2006, 12:04 PM) It would be great to have a reader that allowed you to change the font to something readable, and not forcing you to use the original page width (line breaks) would be very nice. That goes against the whole idea of pdf documents, but I can see how such a feature can come in handy. I agree that would be nice, especially for reading on the Zaurus. I think (without knowing, but this is how I consider it): Using the font the author wanted makes sense ONLY if also the intended document size and shape is used which will in most cases be letter or DIN A4. If the document is viewed on a screen you most probably do not view it in its original size. Especially on the Zaurus this would be very inconvenient because you would have to scroll left and right all the time to read the lines. Thus is is actually very important to change font and line width on the Zaurus! Couldn't ghostscript be used to extract the text contents from a PDF as ASCII? Afterwards, an ebook reader can be used to read the ASCII. Or can Justreader or a smimilar program read in PDF directly? Mickey: Just compiling epdfview; thanks for the idea! daniel |
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Nov 16 2006, 06:32 AM
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#6
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Group: Members Posts: 281 Joined: 9-August 06 Member No.: 10,709 |
I mentioned in an other pdf thread about GPDF2 on SharpRom, it allows you to read the text in an alternate font, stripping line breaks so that it's very easy to read - I was really impressed with it. Not sure if there's any source or what it would take to compile, but something similar to this would be ideal.
For now I don't bother with pdfs, I tend to use chm where possible as kchmviewer is a very nice and stable reader. Anyone had any experience in converting pdf's to djvulibre, as the pdaxrom reader for those is supposed to be pretty good, not that I've used it. |
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Nov 16 2006, 06:39 AM
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#7
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Group: Members Posts: 105 Joined: 3-August 05 Member No.: 7,766 |
QUOTE(zi99y @ Nov 16 2006, 04:32 PM) I mentioned in an other pdf thread about GPDF2 on SharpRom, it allows you to read the text in an alternate font, stripping line breaks so that it's very easy to read Well if it's text only, you could always use xpdf's pdftotext and read the output in some text viewer/editor. qpdf2 is no fun to use. I find xpdf quite ok though (not perfect but good enough) and it works with pdaxrom. |
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Nov 16 2006, 08:17 AM
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#8
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Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 28-April 05 From: Germany Member No.: 7,027 |
QUOTE(tml @ Nov 16 2006, 04:39 PM) Well if it's text only, you could always use xpdf's pdftotext and read the output in some text viewer/editor. qpdf2 is no fun to use. I find xpdf quite ok though (not perfect but good enough) and it works with pdaxrom. Hey, great! Thanks for this hint. I have just compiled epdfview and it is really nice on the Zaurus. The xpdf "pdftoXY" converters are also part of the poppler libraries, so they are available if poppler is installed. In some hours, I will publish the IPKs for latest poppler and epdfview. Thank you! daniel |
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Nov 16 2006, 08:42 AM
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#9
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Group: Members Posts: 1,141 Joined: 22-April 04 From: Belgium Member No.: 2,962 |
QUOTE(daniel3000 @ Nov 16 2006, 05:17 PM) QUOTE(tml @ Nov 16 2006, 04:39 PM) Well if it's text only, you could always use xpdf's pdftotext and read the output in some text viewer/editor. qpdf2 is no fun to use. I find xpdf quite ok though (not perfect but good enough) and it works with pdaxrom. Hey, great! Thanks for this hint. I have just compiled epdfview and it is really nice on the Zaurus. The xpdf "pdftoXY" converters are also part of the poppler libraries, so they are available if poppler is installed. In some hours, I will publish the IPKs for latest poppler and epdfview. Thank you! daniel sounds great, I'm ready to test. Thanks, Chero. |
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Nov 17 2006, 02:03 PM
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#10
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Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 28-April 05 From: Germany Member No.: 7,027 |
QUOTE(Chero @ Nov 16 2006, 06:42 PM) sounds great, I'm ready to test. Thanks, Chero. Hi Chero, please do! in this feed are the latest versions of poppler and epdfview (and some other nice programs): http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0beta3/ daniel |
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Nov 18 2006, 04:17 AM
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#11
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Group: Members Posts: 281 Joined: 9-August 06 Member No.: 10,709 |
First impressions of epdfview are very good, I had a doc open that was very readable set at page width zoom. Since then I've tried to open a couple of larger pdfs and it segfaults before I actually see any text. I have a large swapfile so it shouldnt be low memory causing the crash...
Will try again later, thanks for the packages 
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Nov 19 2006, 06:27 AM
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#12
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Group: Members Posts: 81 Joined: 7-August 04 From: Germany Member No.: 4,222 |
Same here: breakdown with segment fault when trying to open a file with several pages. I tried evince too: same results.
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Nov 19 2006, 09:25 AM
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#13
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Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 28-April 05 From: Germany Member No.: 7,027 |
QUOTE(wowo123 @ Nov 19 2006, 04:27 PM) Same here: breakdown with segment fault when trying to open a file with several pages. I tried evince too: same results. So it seems to be a poppler problem. However, I have not experienced such a crash yet. Will do some more tests with larger files. daniel |
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Nov 19 2006, 09:35 AM
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#14
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Group: Members Posts: 1,002 Joined: 28-April 05 From: Germany Member No.: 7,027 |
And of course just after posting the above, I also got the segfault when loading a 121 page document.
A 19 page document worked without problems. Does anyone use poppler on a desktop machine? Does it crash there, too? daniel |
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Nov 19 2006, 11:19 AM
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#15
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Group: Members Posts: 281 Joined: 9-August 06 Member No.: 10,709 |
Evince 0.4.0 on Debian is very stable with the same pdf that crashes when using your Epdfview package. I'm pretty sure this is poppler also, but I could not see a debian package of epdfview in the apt repos to test.
Would be really good if this worked as it looks so much better than xPdf... |
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