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Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince

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  Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 00:20 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com> - 2023-12-05 01:30 +0100
      Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2023-12-05 06:50 +0100
      Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> - 2023-12-05 08:20 +0100
      Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 12:40 +0100
        Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 18:10 +0100
          Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince jeremy ardley <jeremy.ardley@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 18:50 +0100
          Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com> - 2023-12-05 23:10 +0100
            Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2023-12-06 06:20 +0100
              Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince yxcv@vienna.at - 2023-12-06 10:10 +0100
              Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2023-12-06 13:40 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince "Gareth Evans" <donotspam@fastmail.fm> - 2023-12-05 03:30 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Mike Castle <dalgoda+debian@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 06:30 +0100
      Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 19:10 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> - 2023-12-05 08:20 +0100
      Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 12:40 +0100
        Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> - 2023-12-05 14:30 +0100
          Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Bert Riding <reriding@xmission.com> - 2023-12-07 05:30 +0100
      Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Charles Kroeger <mbone@gmx.co.uk> - 2023-12-08 14:10 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince yxcv@vienna.at - 2023-12-05 08:30 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Klaus Singvogel <deb-user-ml@singvogel.net> - 2023-12-05 09:30 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince marathon <marathon.durandal@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 12:20 +0100
    Re: Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> - 2023-12-05 13:10 +0100

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#264257 — Recommended simple PDF viewer to replace Evince

I have used Evince as my PDF viewer and printer program for many
years. It still works, but it has been spitting out error messages for
a very long time. to wit:

    (evince:81435): EvinceView-CRITICAL **: 16:44:57.520: \
            ev_pixbuf_cache_set_selection_list: \
            assertion 'EV_IS_PIXBUF_CACHE (pixbuf_cache)' failed

The help option doesn't shed any light to me, but it does reference
the website. However, every time I've tried the site throws an error.
That also has been happening for a LONG time.

I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
Just something for viewing and printing.

A bonus would be one with documented CLI use with CUPS printers.

Thanks for any recommendations.

Best regards,

-Tom

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#264260

On Mon, Dec 04, 2023 at 05:12:28PM -0600, Tom Browder wrote:

> I have used Evince as my PDF viewer and printer program for many
> years. It still works, but it has been spitting out error messages for
> a very long time. to wit:
> 
>     (evince:81435): EvinceView-CRITICAL **: 16:44:57.520: \
>             ev_pixbuf_cache_set_selection_list: \
>             assertion 'EV_IS_PIXBUF_CACHE (pixbuf_cache)' failed
> 
> The help option doesn't shed any light to me, but it does reference
> the website. However, every time I've tried the site throws an error.
> That also has been happening for a LONG time.
> 
> I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
> documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
> Just something for viewing and printing.
> 
> A bonus would be one with documented CLI use with CUPS printers.
> 
> Thanks for any recommendations.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -Tom
> 

I use xpdf, which is extremely simple and will allow printing. Don't think
it has a CLI interface. However, I would imagine that simply feeding a PDF
to the printer should work for printing. I could be wrong, though.

Paul

-- 
Paul M. Foster
Personal Blog: http://noferblatz.com
Company Site: http://quillandmouse.com
Software Projects: https://gitlab.com/paulmfoster

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#264270

On 12/4/23 19:20, Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 04, 2023 at 05:12:28PM -0600, Tom Browder wrote:
> 
>> I have used Evince as my PDF viewer and printer program for many
>> years. It still works, but it has been spitting out error messages for
>> a very long time. to wit:
>>
>>      (evince:81435): EvinceView-CRITICAL **: 16:44:57.520: \
>>              ev_pixbuf_cache_set_selection_list: \
>>              assertion 'EV_IS_PIXBUF_CACHE (pixbuf_cache)' failed
>>
>> The help option doesn't shed any light to me, but it does reference
>> the website. However, every time I've tried the site throws an error.
>> That also has been happening for a LONG time.
>>
>> I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
>> documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
>> Just something for viewing and printing.
>>
>> A bonus would be one with documented CLI use with CUPS printers.
>>
>> Thanks for any recommendations.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> -Tom
>>
> 
> I use xpdf, which is extremely simple and will allow printing. Don't think
> it has a CLI interface. However, I would imagine that simply feeding a PDF
> to the printer should work for printing. I could be wrong, though.
> 
> Paul
> 
And I've used okular, which is much like evince.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
  - Louis D. Brandeis

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#264272

Am 04.12.2023 um 19:19:37 Uhr schrieb Paul M Foster:

> Don't think it has a CLI interface. However, I would imagine that
> simply feeding a PDF to the printer should work for printing. I could
> be wrong, though.

IIRC that depends on the printer.

Simply running lpr file.pdf didn't work for my printers.

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#264285

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 02:06 Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 04, 2023 at 05:12:28PM -0600, Tom Browder wrote:
>
> > I have used Evince as my PDF viewer and printer program for many
> > years. It still works, but it has been spitting out error messages for
> > a very long time. to wit:
> >
> >     (evince:81435): EvinceView-CRITICAL **: 16:44:57.520: \
> >             ev_pixbuf_cache_set_selection_list: \
> >             assertion 'EV_IS_PIXBUF_CACHE (pixbuf_cache)' failed
> >
> > The help option doesn't shed any light to me, but it does reference
> > the website. However, every time I've tried the site throws an error.
> > That also has been happening for a LONG time.
> >
> > I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
> > documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
> > Just something for viewing and printing.
> >
> > A bonus would be one with documented CLI use with CUPS printers.
> >
> > Thanks for any recommendations.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > -Tom
> >
>
> I use xpdf, which is extremely simple and will allow printing. Don't think
> it has a CLI interface. However, I would imagine that simply feeding a PDF
> to the printer should work for printing. I could be wrong, though.


When I mean CLI i want a means to **reliably** control settings for my CUPS
printer.

When I manually print via Evince It seems to sometimes change important
settings like page scaling and orientation. And, if it wasn't obvious, the
long-time lack of documentation for Evince is a major pain point.

Thanks, Paul.

-Tom

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#264300

On 05/12/2023 18:30, Tom Browder wrote:
> When I manually print via Evince It seems to sometimes change important 
> settings like page scaling and orientation.

I had an impression that GUI print dialog may remember some settings 
from its previous invocation. Unsure if it is relevant to evince.

I believed that CUPS stack is based on PDF while earlier PostScript was 
used. Filters used to get output specific to particular printers use 
poppler library. (I do not see direct dependency on poppler in evince 
despite I expected it). Poppler was forked from xpdf. Current upstream 
xpdf-4 version is a qt application while v3 in Debian has Xt GUI and 
some issues with non-latin scripts. Xpdf-3 is fast for text documents, 
but may be slow in the case of large JPEG images.

I have heard that some PDF viewers may generate another PDF file 
(simplified one?) when print is requested, however it may be a false 
statement.

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#264304

On 6/12/23 01:09, Max Nikulin wrote:
> I believed that CUPS stack is based on PDF while earlier PostScript 
> was used. 


I recently wrote a  user space CUPS driver for a thermal printer. At the 
point I get to process the print data it has already been rasterised 
into a bitmap. My impression is that CUPS takes whatever it is given to 
print and either passes it transparently to a device that can handle it, 
e.g. a pdf printer,  or rasterises it and passes a bitmap.

I did not see any sign that CUPS goes through an intermediate PDF or PS 
stage.

Also of note is the entire CUPS API is deprecated. I'm not sure what is 
to replace it but whatever it is, it is not mainstream yet.

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#264313

On Wed, Dec 06, 2023 at 12:09:09AM +0700, Max Nikulin wrote:

> On 05/12/2023 18:30, Tom Browder wrote:
> > When I manually print via Evince It seems to sometimes change important
> > settings like page scaling and orientation.
> 
> I had an impression that GUI print dialog may remember some settings from
> its previous invocation. Unsure if it is relevant to evince.
> 
> I believed that CUPS stack is based on PDF while earlier PostScript was
> used. Filters used to get output specific to particular printers use poppler
> library. (I do not see direct dependency on poppler in evince despite I
> expected it). Poppler was forked from xpdf. Current upstream xpdf-4 version
> is a qt application while v3 in Debian has Xt GUI and some issues with
> non-latin scripts. Xpdf-3 is fast for text documents, but may be slow in the
> case of large JPEG images.

I've used Xpdf from Arch, and it's an entirely different program. My
understanding was that the Arch version depended on poppler. I can only
imagine that the version in Debian is different because there is a
licensing issue with the poppler code. Just a guess.

-- 
Paul M. Foster
Personal Blog: http://noferblatz.com
Company Site: http://quillandmouse.com
Software Projects: https://gitlab.com/paulmfoster

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#264316

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On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 05:01:37PM -0500, Paul M Foster wrote:

[...]

> I've used Xpdf from Arch, and it's an entirely different program. My
> understanding was that the Arch version depended on poppler. I can only
> imagine that the version in Debian is different because there is a
> licensing issue with the poppler code. Just a guess.

Debian Bullseye here. Xpdf links against libpoppler102, which has
GPLv2 or V3, same as xpdf.

Cheers
-- 
t

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#264319

On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 06:14:00 +0100

  <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 05:01:37PM -0500, Paul M Foster wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> I've used Xpdf from Arch, and it's an entirely different program. My
>> understanding was that the Arch version depended on poppler. I can 
>>only
>> imagine that the version in Debian is different because there is a
>> licensing issue with the poppler code. Just a guess.
> 
> Debian Bullseye here. Xpdf links against libpoppler102, which has
> GPLv2 or V3, same as xpdf.
> 
> Cheers

Echt simpel die bei Raspian. Und winzig.- Und sogar bunt!

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#264323

On 06/12/2023 12:14, tomas wrote:
> Debian Bullseye here. Xpdf links against libpoppler102, which has
> GPLv2 or V3, same as xpdf.

Perhaps fact checking of the following is required. Gnome forked xpdf to 
have a library (poppler) for a PDF viewer (evince). For security reasons 
Debian maintainers are against of slightly different copies of the same 
code. Including xpdf-3, it was painful, but still manageable to adjust 
xpdf code for poppler. Since that time the upstream project released 
xpdf-4. It is packaged for Arch, but it is unlikely that it will appear 
in Debian since the code diverged even more making UI part hardly 
compatible with poppler.

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#264263

On Mon 04/12/2023 at 23:12, Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have used Evince as my PDF viewer and printer program for many
> years. It still works, but it has been spitting out error messages for
> a very long time. to wit:
>
>     (evince:81435): EvinceView-CRITICAL **: 16:44:57.520: \
>             ev_pixbuf_cache_set_selection_list: \
>             assertion 'EV_IS_PIXBUF_CACHE (pixbuf_cache)' failed
>
> The help option doesn't shed any light to me, but it does reference
> the website. However, every time I've tried the site throws an error.
> That also has been happening for a LONG time.
>
> I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
> documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
> Just something for viewing and printing.
>

Hi Tom,

I find Atril and Okular to be capable viewers, both with CLI options detailed in 

$ man {atril|okular}

I sometimes find Atril less than snappy in displaying (and repainting) graphic-intensive PDFs.

> A bonus would be one with documented CLI use with CUPS printers.

What do you want to do that can't be done with (for example)

$ lp file.pdf 

?

I'm not sure what you mean by "CLI use with CUPS printers".

$ man evince

includes

"Print preview options [...]
       --print-settings %s %f
              This sends the full path of the PDF file, f, and the settings of
              the print dialog, s, to evince."

If that was what you meant, I note there seems to be no equivalent documented for atril or okular, but I don't quite understand how "%s" is to be identified/specified etc.  Some other application's print dialog?

Perhaps you or other(s) can enlighten me.

Thanks,
Gareth

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#264269

I use Evince probably once a week or so from the command line.  I do
not see that error, though I think I have in the past.  I suspect that
if you are seeing those issues with the current bookworm release, it
is likely a problem local to you.

You could be missing a package that evince expects to be there, but
there is a missing dependency (likely, making it a Debian problem).
You could have configured something some time ago that no longer makes
sense, either Gnome based as a whole, something local to Evince, etc,
or a cache corruption (which makes it a local issue which could be a
challenge to track down).  Or a good old fashioned bug somewhere along
the line (perhaps making it a Gnome/Evince bug).

One URL from the man page, http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/,
seems to go through a series of JavaScript based redirects to end up
at https://apps.gnome.org.  That does give a GitLab based 404 error.
I'm not sure if that is the "throws an error" situation you were
referring to or not.  Possibly related, https://circle.gnome.org gives
the same 404.  Both of those links are listed in the footer of
https:///www.gnome.org/.

However, there is another site listed in the man page:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues , and that does appear to
work.  That might be another venue you can try if you want to resolve
the issue instead of abandoning Evince.

As far as alternatives, I think both current versions of Firefox and
Chrome support PDFs natively.  Also, before I started using evince, I
used to use gv (based on ghostview) quite a bit.  The following seems
to list most of the various programs discussed in this thread, plus a
couple of others:

apt-cache search pdf-viewer

mrc

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#264305

On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 7:12 AM Mike Castle <dalgoda+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
...
> You could be missing a package that evince expects to be there, but
> there is a missing dependency (likely, making it a Debian problem).

I think you're onto something. I installed both Okular and Xpdf,
exercised them, and remembered why I wasn't fond of them. I just
removed them both and Evince no longer is putting out the error
messages. Sounds like a Debian bug as you said.

> However, there is another site listed in the man page:
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues , and that does appear to

That works great, thanks! I'm so glad it's still being maintained.

> Chrome supports PDFs natively.  Also, before I started using evince, I
> used to use gv (based on ghostview) quite a bit..

Yes, I used gv and gvv a lot when I was developing PostScript products
heavily. They were very useful.

> The following seems to list most of the various programs discussed in this thread, plus a
> couple of others:
> apt-cache search pdf-viewer

Thanks so much Mike!

And also many thanks to all my Debian friends who answered. I think my
side of this thread is done now.

"Merry Christmas to all and t all a good night!"

-Tom

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#264271

Am 04.12.2023 um 17:12:28 Uhr schrieb Tom Browder:

> I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
> documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
> Just something for viewing and printing.

Try xpdf, but be aware it doesn't support forms nor other special stuff
in PDF like video.

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#264286

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On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 01:14 Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

> Am 04.12.2023 um 17:12:28 Uhr schrieb Tom Browder:
>
> > I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
> > documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
> > Just something for viewing and printing.
>
> Try xpdf, but be aware it doesn't support forms nor other special stuff
> in PDF like video.


I don't need heavy duty.

Thanks, Marco.

>
-Tom

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#264290

I use zathura which is also quite light but I'm not sure if you can
print from it.  I tend to print directly using lp although very
infrequently in any case.
-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-09-14) on Debian 12.2

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#264374

On Tue, 05 Dec 2023 14:30:01 +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:

> I use zathura which is also quite light but I'm not sure if you can
> print from it.  I tend to print directly using lp although very
> infrequently in any case.

In zathura :print brings up the Gtk+ print dialog.

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#264418

> Try xpdf, but be aware it doesn't support forms nor other special stuff
> in PDF like video.

qpdfview is awfully simple.

#apt install qpdfview  (does well with trixie and sid)

It prints well with CUPS that provides a driver for my Kyocera FS-920 b&w
laser printer. That printer is 15 years old. For the first 10 years there
was no driver for it. (generic laser printer) The older your printer is the
better it will work with CUPS.

-- 
CK 

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#264273

On Mon, 4 Dec 2023 17:12:28 -0600
  Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have used Evince as my PDF viewer and printer program for many
> years. It still works, but it has been spitting out error messages 
>for
> a very long time. to wit:
> 
>    (evince:81435): EvinceView-CRITICAL **: 16:44:57.520: \
>            ev_pixbuf_cache_set_selection_list: \
>            assertion 'EV_IS_PIXBUF_CACHE (pixbuf_cache)' failed
> 
> The help option doesn't shed any light to me, but it does reference
> the website. However, every time I've tried the site throws an 
>error.
> That also has been happening for a LONG time.
> 
> I would like to use another program which is similar but has good
> documentation. I don't need a heavy duty program like LibreOffice,
> Just something for viewing and printing.
> 
> A bonus would be one with documented CLI use with CUPS printers.
> 
> Thanks for any recommendations.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -Tom
> 
Okular, Xpdf?

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