emacs-pdf-tools often doesn't display text

  • Open
  • quality assurance status badge
Details
2 participants
  • Pierre Neidhardt
  • zimoun
Owner
unassigned
Submitted by
Pierre Neidhardt
Severity
normal
P
P
Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 5 Oct 2020 16:55
(address . bug-guix@gnu.org)
874kn8k9hu.fsf@ambrevar.xyz
Hi!

For a few weeks (since Emacs 27?) I've experienced an issue with
emacs-pdf-tools: many PDFs don't display any text. If I convert the PDF
to PDF with Ghostscript then it displays properly.

For now I only have private PDFs to reproduce, I still need to found a
public PDF.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Cheers!

--
Pierre Neidhardt
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQFGBAEBCAAwFiEEUPM+LlsMPZAEJKvom9z0l6S7zH8FAl97M+0SHG1haWxAYW1i
cmV2YXIueHl6AAoJEJvc9Jeku8x/gi8H/j4S0hcdyvkIrPSKZyrLEtD5lp4PQwNO
r9dmb7Sd8N/w4F+EJvPXB8N4FqFPfoPLlv3CiM/B5ateLitR+FqUoIaa+VdzvwYv
nB9WS5OYZKyMCzYRXZvAJEkYDNuF7EC40zXaku9fUmD0fBX5+wI61kSESE/l8LJm
JB50UHC0eg+3vosSsnS3bkmyfwbFdDlS4ekqcKHkUH+7812ealBeHhCdPNsl/WTs
tjGUJkDxdBY7/5HRavf1aSGCY+fMANroRmqHAqZhm9+sn4ejJwaiVyE1kbkkLewC
HHIfpbtf1LNscd0rgKL7KQUBPJpMCqVsTtK7/U0LbA6Et2GzinE+Fjk=
=56+F
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Z
Z
zimoun wrote on 5 Oct 2020 18:10
(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)(address . 43815@debbugs.gnu.org)
CAJ3okZ3_hO_SLEM485C6rcvUHOYSNYXPgzXG2OH=4va_Q9Rj_w@mail.gmail.com
On Mon, 5 Oct 2020 at 16:56, Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> wrote:

Toggle quote (3 lines)
> For now I only have private PDFs to reproduce, I still need to found a
> public PDF.

How do you produce these private PDFs?


Toggle quote (2 lines)
> Has anyone else experienced this?

No on the PDFs I have tried.

Cheers,
simon
P
P
Pierre Neidhardt wrote on 5 Oct 2020 19:29
(name . zimoun)(address . zimon.toutoune@gmail.com)(address . 43815@debbugs.gnu.org)
87h7r8intn.fsf@ambrevar.xyz
zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

Toggle quote (2 lines)
> How do you produce these private PDFs?

I don't know, these are PDFs I receive over emails.
I suspect they are generated by some *Office processor.

--
Pierre Neidhardt
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQFGBAEBCAAwFiEEUPM+LlsMPZAEJKvom9z0l6S7zH8FAl97V+QSHG1haWxAYW1i
cmV2YXIueHl6AAoJEJvc9Jeku8x/KHUIALDYWdGJAokQ2EbOfsKUOyrreqkCzSbs
xBLCy8LUCw1/qTVI+Jpku9+bAhvO29Flj3FFMJA1S6WUrhrmoyQVms9sI66MF1KE
vk/yrgQhhJDFxGIyXBIIuuux6x8cU3g4sxRIlfS+Izay3AuB+PvcJM2f0iliNUNp
zj1oU353ZiWT0MltTw76s8s0OQ2MLDVwF3sE3vlrmqnRYt+72tluZWqIut1ycH8Q
ci8xRG+UIn2wmbROnBitJqDlf9cBbNTO3mM+pozqCyLYBtKNLNK4G36jrK7M5Xl5
CnKaNcYVCHDw/PzMYp8stPIwBMdocadxsd9c4gexzwUML5+7WPy1Qvg=
=ezLS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Z
Z
zimoun wrote on 5 Oct 2020 22:48
(name . Pierre Neidhardt)(address . mail@ambrevar.xyz)(address . 43815@debbugs.gnu.org)
CAJ3okZ0+oe+gSFeNnauQ_zn34MNuPfrSsS=G0ZHjxXUpM82y4Q@mail.gmail.com
On Mon, 5 Oct 2020 at 19:29, Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> wrote:

Toggle quote (5 lines)
> > How do you produce these private PDFs?
>
> I don't know, these are PDFs I receive over emails.
> I suspect they are generated by some *Office processor.

Well, what happens with other PDF readers (MuPDF, etc.)?

From my experience, these kinds of PDFs are badly generated and
contain unexpected content; some readers ignore it, some other ones
are unhappy. For example, I remember a completely different rendering
of the same PDF depending on MuPDF vs Evince vs Xpdf, and the PDF was
generated by Mac tools.

I am reading really large PDFs with emacs-pdf-tools (PhD thesis or
scientific books) and until now I have never had an issue. And I am
also reading PDFs with "complex" rendering such as scientific articles
(multicolumns, figures, fonts, etc.) without any issue.

Without any backtrace, warning or error message, it is hard to tell if
it comes from emacs-pdf-tools and (more probably) your PDFs. :-)


All the best,
simon
?