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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] status of pdf under BL3; a current summary
  • Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:05:12 +0000 (UTC)

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Sindi wrote:

Use pdftoppm (which may not handle pdf 1.5) and view with zgz (one page at

Hmmm. Looks like I may have been laboring under a fundamental
misconception, then. Your efforts at pdf rendering were not geared toward
reading files created under the newer pdf spec after all. Rather, the
attempt was to find a leaner, less bloated pdf reader, right?

It was to do both. I just checked, and the latest pdftoppm does work with pdf 1.5 files (I keep one as a test). It may be the DOS/Windows version of pdftoppm that was not updated. It does produce very large files using a rather large program (1.7MB).

You can also use gs itself to convert from pdf to p?m format instead of pdftopnm. See Use.htm in /usr/local/share/ghostscript.
gs -sDEVICE=pbm -o filename-%d.pbm filename.pdf
This will produce filename1.pbm filename2.pbm ....

You can make your own script called pdf2ppm (the xdpf one is pdftoppm), pdftopbm, pdftogm (or if you use the larger gs with more devices including jpeg, pdftojpeg, etc.)

Xvesa won't work with the latest precompiled xpdf. If you insist on not
using svgalib, pdftoppm then xli. Use Abiword fonts links to gs fonts
directory.

Maybe I'll test that out. It would require the xpdf files you compiled and

I got precompiled xpdf 3.02 from www.foolabs.net/xpdf. I repackaged it without the xpdf part to make it smaller and posted as xpdf302-noX-nogs.tgz. (The nogs means it works without needing gs, but you do need to either make a gs fonts directory and symlink to the Abiword fonts, or edit .xpdfrc to point directly to it).

have available at your site, correct? If I do test it, it will be on a
confirmed v. 1.5 or 1.6 pdf file--just to see if the program can handle
It can handle 1.5.

that. I'm not absolutely opposed to trying out svgalib/vgalib, btw. Just
seems like the more complex solution at the moment since I'm not sure yet
whether I'll be needing to use the 2.4.x kernel (possibility to get USB
functionality).

svgalib also works without the 2.4 kernel, but needs to have suid bit set to run as user. (chmod o+s ?). With 2.4 kernel, you can insert a module svgalib_helper.o instead, which works with /dev/svga*. There were reports of zgv having security problems run suid. 2.4 is needed for USB storage, not other USB devices.

In /etc/vga libvga.config, to use kernel 2.2, comment out the line

Helper /dev/svga (I don't recall how I set it by default)


Since the precompiled version already works with BL2 and upgraded glibc,
a libc5 version would make more sense for BL3 (smaller than uclibc).
I am not set up to compile for BL3 libc, only uclibc (which often produces
unusable results, such as for nano static).

Just out of curiosity, what would it take to set up BL3 for compiling?
About 10MB free space, I think. Much less than for glibc. I was compiling for BL1 on a 486 (kermit). I can't find the instructions for setting up to compile with BL1 or BL3 at the website but they are listed at https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/baslinux/2006-June/010786.html

binutils, egcs, gmake, libc (full), linuxinc

Then download your source code, unpack it, read INSTALL (or README) in the main directory or sometimes in docs, if instructed to do so edit Makefile.cfg or some other file (or accept the defaults), ./configure (for most programs but some are strange), then 'make' or 'make install' (however you are instructed).

Which program are you after? For dropbear (dbclient/scp) there is an INSTALL which says to Edit options.h to set features (you can just ignore this), then ./configure (optionally with --disable-zlib or --disable-syslog) and then make PROGRAMS="dbclient scp" (or make them all). or make ....... install (installs to /usr/local/bin)

make clean before you recompile differently.

strip scp will remove stuff not needed for normal use (makes it smaller).

To compile for libc5 you should do this on a setup which does not have glibc on it (or learn to specify which library to compile (and let me know). There may be space to compile in a 20MB loop BL3.50 (or enlarge it).

To make static dropbear add STATIC=1 to the Make line. Then you can compile without worrying about which library is used, or whether libc5 will work with a particular program. If you have glibc already, you can also use a later gcc (2.95.3). (Or just use what I already compiled for glibc).

I compiled using the standard BL1 setup with the five added packages.

Steven? If I were to want to try my hand at this, would it be better to
just do a fullish Slack4 installation for my libc5 compiling environment
rather than trying to adapt BL3 to this purpose? I would probably use qemu
were I to set up such an environment. Feedback on this question will be
appreciated.

Thanks,
James

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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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