Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Sindi wrote:

> The older xpdf probably used the X instead of the gs fonts.
>
> See /usr/local/etc/xpdfrc or ~/.xpdfrc
>
> "X fonts section has been omitted.  This package is designed to use
> the included ghostscript fonts instead."
> I uploaded my modified xpdfrc to my BL site just now.
>
> The original xpdfrc from xpdf is posted as sample-xpdfrc.

I looked at both those files but I don't see the statement "X fonts 
section has been omitted.  This package is designed to use the included 
ghostscript fonts instead." Maybe that comes from some other file like a 
README or something?

Anyway, this problem of blank pdf's persists. No pdf I've tried to view so 
far displays properly, and most are simply blank, showing no text at all. 
I went ahead and added the gsfonts from Slack4, though rather than pkg'ing 
them, I simply unpacked and hand-copied them to 
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts. That made no difference at all: I 
still get mostly blank pdf's. When I start xpdf from a terminal and open a 
pdf, I see line after line of error messages of the type "Error: Failed to 
open font: '-*-times-medium-r-normal-*-11-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1." So I 
downloaded your sample-xpdfrc and copied it to my root and user home 
directories, renaming it .xpdfrc. Then I edited it and uncommented all 
lines in the display fonts section, checked that the paths there were 
valid for this system and also checked to see that each font listed was 
actually in the directory pointed to. That all checks out fine. But I 
still get mostly blank pdf's when I try to view them with xpdf. And I 
still get the error messages in the terminal, as indicated above. So I'm 
still stuck as far as viewing pdf's is concerned.

Why did it all work on the testbed laptop? Because of the fuller set of 
fonts I installed from Slack4? I can't rule out the possibility that I 
installed there your noX xpdf--I just don't recall. If I did, could that 
have had an effect? I'm a bit stumped at the moment. Further input will be 
appreciated.

> I have modified it to use fewer serif fonts (just Nimbus rather than also 
> Times and Helvetica, which are larger).  This will save hard disk space 
> and a bit of memory.  I prefer to see all my text the same font.
>
> Nimbus is n01*.pfb and about 35K for each of four fonts (normal, italic, 
> bold, italic-bold, the others a bit larger (45-50K).
>
> Courier (monospaced) is n022*.pfb
>
> To save more space on hard disk you could eliminate italic and bold.
>
> symbols s*.pfb
>
> dingbats d*.pfb

Maybe next I'll simply try your modified .xpdfrc and see what the results 
are.

Thanks,
James