Bug 12925

Summary:	Install xpdf headers by default
Product:	poppler	Reporter:	Manuel Reimer <Manuel.Spam>
Component:	general	Assignee:	poppler-bugs <poppler-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	major
Priority:	high
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Manuel Reimer 2007-10-25 07:17:17 UTC

As poppler does not longer install the old xpdf headers, a few smaller projects, which already ported their code to use poppler and to get rid of their own copy of the xpdf files, are broken on distributions, which don't explicitely compile with --enable-xpdf-headers.

In your README, you write:
| First, we want to provide PDF rendering functionality as a shared
| library, to centralize the maintenence effort. Today a number of
| applications incorporate the xpdf code base, and whenever a security
| issue is discovered, all these applications exchange patches and put
| out new releases.

I don't think, that it helps to reach this goal, if those applications, that need the "old API" get broken by not delivering the required headers.

I think, at least for smaller console applications (not viewers) the currently available interfaces to poppler aren't as good as the old headers. The only way, that could probably work, is the glib-wrapper, but I don't know how good this works for applications, which don't have to get a GUI, but only have to process PDF on the command line.

If the glib-wrapper really is able to replace the old headers, then there should be at least some HOWTO on how to port an application to use this headers. And poppler itself should use them, as the console applications, delivered with poppler, also still use the old headers ;-)

At least as an short term solution, the default should be changed to "add xpdf headers" and the disabling of this headers should be optional.

Comment 1 Albert Astals Cid 2007-10-25 10:27:35 UTC

It's fun when people think they can change the bug priority and severity :-)

This fields are there for the developer, not for the reporter.

Coming back to your problem we won't change the default of not installing xpdf headers because we want to try to give a stable API and we can not guarantee API stability over such a huge number of headers.

If you think none of the three available frontends suits you i want to encourage you to write a new (toolkit agnostic) frontend that suits you and the rest of smaller console applications.

Please come to the mailing list to discuss this further.

Comment 2 Nico Nelson 2013-01-04 22:17:29 UTC

5 years later, apps (like inkscape) still use the obsolete headers, and probably any distro provides these headers when you install the devel package.

face reality and provide these headers by default, as they are used in practice.

anyone compiling poppler from source for the first time will run into this and waste precious time searching for the missing headers when their app of choice fails to build despite having all dependencies installed.

Comment 3 Albert Astals Cid 2013-01-05 15:20:44 UTC

People kill eachother in the streets and they have been doing it for thousands of years of so called civilization. Fortunately killing is still frowned upon.

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