Comment 72 for bug 168610

@Khorf - it looks like gradients with 'repeat' settings other than 'none' are exported in a way that lets Adobe Reader crash. That's a bug in AR (even if the PDF is bad it shouldn't crash) that Adrian has reported to Adobe. You could confirm that it is limited to 'reflect' or 'direct' by recreating the dart gradient without 'Repeat: reflect' but with several stops that simulate the 'reflect' effect and testing if AR still crashes when opening the new PDF (or by trying to open the three PDFs included in my previous attachment with AR).

Other than that I'm not expert enough to determine what causes the issue - I don't know the PDF file format (how it defines reflected or repeated linear gradients) and I trust Adrian if he says it looks like a bug in Inkscape.

[ side note: I'm unsure whether this is a new issue and should better be filed separately or if it warrants to re-open this report (which was from the beginning a mixed bag of pattern and gradient issues?). Personally I would have filed a new one I guess, because it looks like it's limited to the export of two types of linear gradients, independent of transparency issues or other known difficulties with PDF export. Of course this is an assumption I can't verify without having Adobe software installed - but if AR would crash on every PDF with gradients created by Inkscape, I'd assume the bug tracker would be 'flooded' with duplicate reports?

Could some else from the Bug Team have a closer look at this? ]