Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

baslinux - Re: [BL] new problem with display of pdf's

baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Baslinux mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] new problem with display of pdf's
  • Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:07:12 -0500 (CDT)

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




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page