OESF Portables Forum

Model Specific Forums => Sharp Zaurus => Zaurus - pdaXrom => Topic started by: daniel3000 on November 16, 2006, 05:34:09 am

Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 16, 2006, 05:34:09 am
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
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: Mickeyl on November 16, 2006, 06:19:14 am
might give epdfView a try. It's also based on poppler, but more lightweight.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: zi99y on November 16, 2006, 07:04:47 am
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.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: koen on November 16, 2006, 07:11:26 am
Quote
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.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146430\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

That goes against the whole idea of pdf documents, but I can see how such a feature can come in handy.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 16, 2006, 07:36:51 am
Quote
Quote
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.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146430\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

That goes against the whole idea of pdf documents, but I can see how such a feature can come in handy.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146432\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

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
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: zi99y on November 16, 2006, 09:32:12 am
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.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: tml on November 16, 2006, 09:39:38 am
Quote
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
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146441\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

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.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 16, 2006, 11:17:08 am
Quote
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.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146443\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

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
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: Chero on November 16, 2006, 11:42:55 am
Quote
Quote
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.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146443\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

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
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146450\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

sounds great, I'm ready to test.

Thanks,
Chero.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 17, 2006, 05:03:03 pm
Quote
sounds great, I'm ready to test.

Thanks,
Chero.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=146456\")

Hi Chero,

please do!

in this feed are the latest versions of poppler and epdfview (and some other nice programs):
[a href=\"http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0beta3/]http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0beta3/[/url]

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: zi99y on November 18, 2006, 07:17:16 am
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
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: wowo123 on November 19, 2006, 09:27:43 am
Same here: breakdown with segment fault when trying to open a file with several pages. I tried evince too: same results.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 19, 2006, 12:25:17 pm
Quote
Same here: breakdown with segment fault when trying to open a file with several pages. I tried evince too: same results.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146655\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

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
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 19, 2006, 12:35:21 pm
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
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: zi99y on November 19, 2006, 02:19:51 pm
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...
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: zi99y on November 28, 2006, 12:25:48 pm
Found some old ipks for evince poppler and freetype in this thread: https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showt...hl=evince&st=30 (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9343&hl=evince&st=30)

seem to work very well, if slow, and with this older poppler the version of epdfview (mentioned below) works fine
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: Meanie on November 28, 2006, 06:10:07 pm
Quote
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
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146597\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

most of the poppler/xpdf libraries have /tmp hardcoded so swap is ignored ;(
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 29, 2006, 04:02:34 am
Quote
Quote
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
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146597\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

most of the poppler/xpdf libraries have /tmp hardcoded so swap is ignored ;(
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=147449\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

aha, that means, if we link /tmp to a place with much space, these crashes shouldn't happen anymore?

Will try.

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 29, 2006, 04:57:24 am
Did some tests:

I have uninstalled the old freetype 2.1.9 and installed the newer freetype package 2.1.10 from here (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9343&view=findpost&p=97052).

Now the new epdfview / poppler combo from the hermocom feed (http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0beta3/) seems to better! At least it doesn't segfault anymore on large documents.

However, the page index / table of contents navigation does not seem to work. The chapters are listed, but all with page #0, and clicking on them does nothing.
Navigating using page number entry seems to work.
Also, sometimes pages appear empty.

BTW: During working with a large document, I observed the contents of /tmp.
I could not find anything created by epdfview or poppler there.

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 29, 2006, 05:06:13 am
just saw on the console:

Code: [Select]
some font thing failed
Error: could not create type1 face
some font thing failed
Error: could not create truetype face

repeating.
So somehow there still seems to be a freetype problem.
But what exactly?
Any idea?


daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 29, 2006, 05:13:25 am
problem solved it seems:
THIS was due to a full /tmp directory. :-)
I have filled my /tmp (/dev/shm/tmp; 12MB) with junk to simulate a full /tmp and see if epdfview really suffers from it.
It does! Meanie is right.

Depleting /tmp now makes epdfview work well. No font problems anymore.

However, the index still does not work.

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: zi99y on November 29, 2006, 05:28:08 am
Excellent! So is it much improved from using the latest poppler package? I'm hoping it will be a bit faster as the older one is pig slow, but does work.

Maybe someone could make an amendment on the hermocom ipk post in the new packages thread for others.
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 29, 2006, 08:22:35 am
Quote
Excellent! So is it much improved from using the latest poppler package? I'm hoping it will be a bit faster as the older one is pig slow, but does work.

Maybe someone could make an amendment on the hermocom ipk post in the new packages thread for others.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=147487\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

done.

I don't know about improvements of new poppler / epdf above the older versions.

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 29, 2006, 10:13:17 am
If you install the new freetype package 2.1.10, be sure to run these commands afterwards:

Code: [Select]
strip /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6.3.8
strip /usr/lib/libfreetype.a

This reduces the size of the two files from together 3MB to 600kB!

You may need a developer image mounted for this to work. I don' tknow if strip is part of the standard installation of pdaXrom.

(I wondered why that new freetype is so much larger than the old one - the packager seems to have forgotten stripping the libs).

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: svs57 on November 30, 2006, 08:20:14 am
I tried epdfview. It crash while opening pdf file. size of pdf ~ 177K
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on November 30, 2006, 03:55:29 pm
Quote
I tried epdfview. It crash while opening pdf file. size of pdf ~ 177K
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=147584\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Which version of freetype is installed on your system?
Which versions of epdfview and poppler did you try?

Any output on the console which could help?

daniel
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: tanjian2 on November 30, 2006, 07:00:28 pm
Quote
Quote
I tried epdfview. It crash while opening pdf file. size of pdf ~ 177K
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=147584\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Which version of freetype is installed on your system?
Which versions of epdfview and poppler did you try?

Any output on the console which could help?

daniel
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=147631\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I have just tried epdfview (epdfview_0.1.2_arm5tel.ipk/poppler_0.5.1_arm5tel.ipk) with a 6.9Mb pdf and it works fine - freetype-2.1.9 I think.

tanjian
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: svs57 on December 01, 2006, 06:03:59 am
Quote
Quote
I tried epdfview. It crash while opening pdf file. size of pdf ~ 177K
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=147584\")

Which version of freetype is installed on your system?
Which versions of epdfview and poppler did you try?

Any output on the console which could help?

daniel
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=147631\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
[a href=\"http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0beta3/epdfview_0.1.5-hmc-1_armv5tel.ipk]http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0...-1_armv5tel.ipk[/url]
http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0...-1_armv5tel.ipk (http://www.hermocom.com/feeds/pdaxrom1.1.0beta3/poppler_0.5.4-hmc-1_armv5tel.ipk)
http://www.karma-lab.net/zaurus/experiment....5_armv5tel.ipk (http://www.karma-lab.net/zaurus/experimental/epdfview_0.1.5_armv5tel.ipk)
freetype 2.1.10 forget from which site

$epdfview file.pdf
killed
$
I tried set swap and change /tmp to sd
Nothing help
xpdf open this pdf file on zaurus
I use pdaXrom r121
Thanks
Title: Evince / Poppler Experiences
Post by: daniel3000 on December 01, 2006, 07:41:59 am
r121 - so this could be the reason?
The IPKs are compiled for beta3. At least the hermocom ones. karma-lab too?

daniel