Bug 5690

Summary:	Problems with bitmap fonts
Product:	poppler	Reporter:	Giacomo Perale <ghepeu>
Component:	general	Assignee:	poppler-bugs <poppler-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	dynamotwain, jakubalba, lamers, mpsuzuki, nalin, nunojsg+bugsfdo
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86 (IA32)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	pdf document Another example pdf

Description Giacomo Perale 2006-01-23 08:50:21 UTC

Using poppler 0.5.0 with evince 0.5.0. A pdf document that I'm going to attach
uses these fonts:

pdffonts Kitzmiller\ v.\ Dover\ District\ Memorandum.pdf
name                                 type         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ------------ --- --- --- ---------
TimesNewRomanPSMT                    TrueType     no  no  no     284  0
TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT               TrueType     no  no  no     285  0
Helvetica                            Type 1       no  no  no       1  0
TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT             TrueType     no  no  no     326  0

Helvetica is used for the header of every page, and since I've upgraded to
poppler 0.5.0 random characters are displayed instead of the header and this
error message appears in console:

Error: Couldn't find a font for 'Helvetica'
some font thing failed

Then evince crashes when I close the program. fc-match `Helvetica' gives:

helvR12-L1.bdf: "Helvetica" "Regular"

helvR12-L1.bdf is included in Xorg 7.0. If I install Helvetica.ttf (please note
that this isn't a default X font, nor it comes with Windows) fc-match gives:

Helvetica.ttf: "Helvetica" "Regular"

and everything works flawlessy.

Comment 1 Giacomo Perale 2006-01-23 08:52:02 UTC

Created attachment 4433 [details]
pdf document

Comment 2 Kristian Høgsberg 2006-01-24 05:50:07 UTC

Could you try the patch in attachment 4409 [details] [review]?  Thanks.

Comment 3 Giacomo Perale 2006-01-24 08:58:53 UTC

no changes here, sorry.

Comment 4 dynamotwain 2006-01-29 13:22:16 UTC

Created attachment 4502 [details]
Another example pdf

Generated by Apache FOP using PCGen. Oddly enough, the troubling font is also
Helvetica, but I don't have a truetype font to replace it. For future
reference, the lines added to /etc/fonts/local.conf work as a temporary
workaround:
<match target="pattern">
    <test qual="any" name="family"><string>Helvetica</string></test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign"><string>Arial</string></edit>
</match>

There are still some other fonts not being displayed correctly (Check-marks to
the left of the skills list) but there are no errors displayed to the console.

However, the evince doesn't crash when trying to quit after opening this file
anymore.

Comment 5 Reinier Lamers 2009-10-20 04:43:54 UTC

I still experience this bug, using Poppler 0.10.5 from the KDE for Windows distribution (MingW compiled, KDE 4.3.0).

dynamotwain@aim.com's workaround works well, but it took a while to find this page.

Comment 6 Jakub Alba 2016-08-02 18:13:36 UTC

I've tested with evince 3.20 + poppler-0.42 and evince 3.20 + poppler-master. The problem doesn't occur for me. Can anyone of you confirm it works for you as well now?

Comment 7 Albert Astals Cid 2017-06-17 10:46:02 UTC

No answer to the question, so let's assume it's all good now.

Comment 8 Nuno J. Silva 2017-06-20 11:31:09 UTC

I believe I am experiencing something similar. Strangely, the PDF font list only has Arial, not Helvetica, but the kerning problem goes away once I manually assign Helvetica to Arial in .fonts.conf (I have Helvetica as a bitmap font, and Arial as a truetype font).

(libpoppler 0.45.0 with qpdfview 0.4.16)


Jakub: What does "fc-match Helvetica" show there?

Comment 9 Nuno J. Silva 2017-06-20 12:01:37 UTC

To clarify, I don't get random characters, but the text is instead rendered with a different font, with clear kerning problems. And these problems go away as soon as I assign a metric-compatible non-bitmap font to "Helvetica".

Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.