evince fails to open common pdf files

[Eric Firing]

Binary package hint: evince

Files evince fails to open, saying "Failed to load document from data (error 1)", include PDFReference16.pdf from Adobe, PostscriptRef.pdf, also from Adobe, and many others. I can supply a moderately-sized example upon request.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Aug 22 08:10:22 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evince
Package: evince 0.9.3-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: evince file:///media/disk/efiring/docs/T41Manual.pdf
ProcCwd: /home/ubuntu
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evince
Uname: Linux ubuntu 2.6.22-9-generic #1 SMP Fri Aug 3 00:50:37 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Jérôme Guelfucci (jerome-guelfucci-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for your bug report. An example file would be welcome.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for.
Thanks!

[Eric Firing (efiring)]

Sorry, I had replied to Jerome's email request with an example file as an attachment instead of going through launchpad. The example is now attached.

[Jérôme Guelfucci (jerome-guelfucci-deactivatedaccount)]

Sorry, I must have forgotten to transmit it or never received it (I can't remember, sorry). I'm setting this as new as I don't have the time to test this now.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

It works fine here with Gutsy, which version of Ubuntu are you running? May you tell us what you expect to see in the document?

[Eric Firing (efiring)]

Pedro Villavicencio wrote:
> It works fine here with Gutsy, which version of Ubuntu are you running?
> May you tell us what you expect to see in the document?
>
> ** Changed in: evince (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

The failure was on Gutsy Tribe 4, running from the live CD and reading
the file from my hard drive. As noted in the original report, some
files opened fine, others did not. I have a Tribe 5 CD; I will try that
right now.

Eric

[Eric Firing (efiring)]

Pedro Villavicencio wrote:
> It works fine here with Gutsy, which version of Ubuntu are you running?
> May you tell us what you expect to see in the document?
>
> ** Changed in: evince (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

OK, now I know what the problem was: file permissions. (I thought
everything in the directory I was reading was public-read, but I didn't
check.) This is almost always the problem in such cases, and I have
known that for 20 years or so, so I am extremely embarrassed to have
missed it this time. I was hasty and careless. I apologize for the
resulting noise and fuss.

However: it would have helped if the error message from evince had said
something like "permission denied" instead of "Failed to load document
from data (error 1)". This is a design problem, not a bug.

Eric

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

That's ok, not a problem at all, closing this bug for now, please don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. thanks!.