Maximum zoom in Evince is 400%

[DjMix]

Binary package hint: evince

Evince zoom max is 400%, and in some pdf this is too small. I have to use xpdf to open some file in a usable way.. you should remove this limit

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Jun 20 13:26:32 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evince
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: evince 2.22.2-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evince
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

WORKAROUND:
`gsettings set org.gnome.Evince page-cache-size 2014`

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, that's known upstream you can track it here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303365

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

Generally the whole picking the zoom amount off a fixed menu like that is a bit odd and very restrictive.
Also as I remember a lot of the zoom options aren't on the tool bar by default which makes things a lot simpler.

[Vish (vish)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. Unfortunately a paper cut should be a small usability issue that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. I'm afraid this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.

App specific bugs are not papercuts.

A paper cut is a minor usability annoyance that an average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10.

For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Don't worry though, This bug has been marked as "invalid" ONLY in the papercuts project.

[Svenskmand (svenskmand)]

Just to correct you saying:

"A paper cut is a minor usability annoyance that an average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10."

I ran Evince in resolution 1920x1080 and was not able to read a simple scientific article as the zoom level of 400 % was so small, this effectively renders Evince useless on any system running at a ressolution of 1920x1080. This was also the reason that I switched to Okular as it supports a bigger zooming, so I can read articles that span the full width of my screen.

[Svenskmand (svenskmand)]

And a final coment, when you say:

"Unfortunately a paper cut should be a small usability issue that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix"

If it is so easy to fix, and it has the major impacts as I mention when running at resolution 1920x1080, then I really do not get why it is not justs fixed, you say yourself that it is "easy to fix".

[Vish (vish)]

@Svenskmand:
I'm not saying that this is not a bug affecting many...
It is a bug and it needs fixing.

*A papercut needs to be a system wide bug* , not an app specific bug.
For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Do note: This bug is still active in evince. but just not a papercut. So you can be assured this will be looked into by the evince devs.

[Vish (vish)]

@Svenskmand:Oh ... and i have not mentioned anywhere that this is easy to fix.
Pls read the sentence you quoted, I am mentioning that *a papercut need to be an easy fix* , i did not mention about this bug

[Pander (pander)]

Come on, how hard can this be?

diff cut-n-paste/zoom-control/ephy-zoom.h~ cut-n-paste/zoom-control/ephy-zoom.h
60c60,61
< { N_("400%"), 4.0 }
---
> { N_("400%"), 4.0 },
> { N_("800%"), 8.0 }

and add 800% to the po and help files.

Creating such a patch, testing it and releasing a new package in updates repository would make so many people happy.

[Pander (pander)]

Or release it in some one's PPA.

[Pander (pander)]

Since https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303365 is talking about Acrobat and 6400% I would like to suggest the following extra zoom levels:

800% 8.0
1600% 16.0
3200% 32.0
6400% 64.0

The patch above works fine on my system. However, to get a complete fix, also the po and help files must be patched in order to be able to feed proper values to the GUI widgets.

[Pander (pander)]

Oh, and I had to disable the 99_autoconf.patch in order to run
# dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
on Karmic (with all Karmic sources) Perhaps the maintainer can have a look at that.

Trying patch debian/patches/99_autoconf.patch at level 1 ... 0 ... 2 ... failure.
make: *** [debian/stamp-patched] Error 1
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build gave error exit status 2

# cat debian/patches/99_autoconf.patch.level-2.log
missing header for unified diff at line 4 of patch
can't find file to patch at input line 4
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|diff -Nur -x '*.orig' -x '*~' evince-2.27.4/configure evince-2.27.4.new/configure
|--- evince-2.27.4/configure 2009-07-13 21:06:12.000000000 +0200
|+++ evince-2.27.4.new/configure 2009-07-13 21:56:11.000000000 +0200
--------------------------
File to patch:
Skip this patch? [y]
Skipping patch.
4 out of 4 hunks ignored

And these are the proper lines to add to ephy-zoom.h

 { N_("400%"), 4.0 },
 { N_("800%"), 5.656854249 },
 { N_("1600%"), 8.0 },
 { N_("3200%"), 11.313708499 },
 { N_("6400%"), 16.0 }

[Pander (pander)]

forget to tell y'all, also change
  #define MAX_SCALE 4.0
to
  #define MAX_SCALE 16.0
in file
  libview/ev-view.c
and you're done :D

[Pander (pander)]

However, this does not fix the underlying inefficient rendering done by poppler but it does allow users to zoom in much more than before, be it at the price of high CPU load. But I'm fine with that for now. A patch for now on the Ubuntu package would enable zooming up to 1600% (scaling of 8) would limit the amount of extra CPU power. For more details, see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303365

[Alex Tasin (alextasin)]

In some files the limit is 100%....
wishlist??

[Davide Capodaglio (davidecapod)]

I have a document where maximum zoom level is 100%
http://www.spaziodelta.com/agenda21/download/carta%20escursionistica%20AGENDA21LAGHI_2009_fronte.pdf
is it the same problem?
I have also seen
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince/+bug/721217

[sdaau (sd-imi)]

Just wanted to note - I tried an alternative viewer like in the OP; on my Ubuntu 11.04, `xpdf` crashes as in:

Bug #669211 “Xpdf segfaults on start in libpoppler.so.7” : Bugs : “xpdf” package : Ubuntu
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xpdf/+bug/669211

What worked for me was to use `mupdf` instead: it seems to use dpi instead of a zoom level in percent, but doesn't seem to have the same max zoom limitation as `evince`.

[Karl Kastner (kastner-karl)]

The minimum zoom level is annoying, too. The current minimum zoom level is 10%, which makes it impossible to display high resolution pdf on a single screen width. This effects PDFs produced from scans where the density was set to a wrong value, i.e. a 600dpi scan labelled as 75dpi. Evince should not rely on the density to be set correctly.

[D. H. B. Marcos (dhbmarcos)]

I try configure a document with a maximum zoom. In my case, the Evince set 256,78%, no more, by mouse, keyboard or input box.

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

Any progress on this?

A similar problem seems to be that the smallest zoom is 20%. This is not sufficient when editing large poster.

[Timothée Manaud (timothee)]

This is ridiculous, 10 years without any progress, I'm switching back to Windows and Adobe!

[Tomislav (hefest)]

@Timothee What is ridiculous is making comments which sound very much like entitlement, while expecting other people to do all the work for free. Sure, this is a nuisance, but obviously not a very big one, otherwise there would be more pressure and willingness to get it sorted out. If it was that much of a problem for me, I'd take a look at the code and propose a patch: sounds simple enough to do, but it's not important enough to me.

As it is, "I'm going to switch to Windows and Adobe because I can't zoom in more than 400% in a PDF" is a completely bizarre threat. If that's all it takes, you'll be switching between operating systems faster than socks, in which case, it doesn't matter anyway. Otherwise it's just lashing out, which again doesn't matter (at best) or is counter-productive (at worst).

[jcsjcs (jcsjcs)]

It's unfortunate that this bug never gets fixed -- it's now marked as "expired", but it's still there.
I encourage the developers to try to view this document showing the tariff regions for public transportation in the Frankfurt/Main region. On my 13" FullHD screen the station names are impossible to read. The maxium zoom is around 160%.

https://www.rmv.de/c/de/fahrkarten/regeln/wichtige-tarifinformationen/uebersichtskarte-tarifgebiete/
https://www.rmv.de/c/fileadmin/documents/PDFs/_RMV_DE/Fahrkarten/Regeln/Tarifgesamtplan2018_594x610_171203.pdf

In the past I could work around the problem by using "evince-previewer" for this task, but that loophole seems to have been closed now as well (17.10).

I've installed FoxitReader now and it works great -- but it's another piece of software that needs to be updated by hand...

[Claudio (claudio-fischer)]

see my post here on the evince issue site:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/6#note_274791

if you higher the page-cache-size as described,
you get zoom up to 2500% in evince.

[Timothée Manaud (timothee)]

Thanks Claudio,
Indeed, changing the page-cache-size with the following command:
gsettings set org.gnome.Evince page-cache-size 2014

We are now able have a way bigger zoom ( 3200% ) (screenshot attached)

[Colin 't Hart (colinthart)]

Thanks Timothée. That fixed it for me.

Please make something like this the default.

[Timothée Manaud (timothee)]

Any news on a fix in the trunk? As of today, on Ubuntu 19.04, I still have to change with gsettings.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Further to comment #23, the upstream report was moved to:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/6
Any progress on the issue being fixed will be found there.

[Timothée Manaud (timothee)]

Updated to Ubuntu 20.04 and still this issue: very limited zoom in Evince PDF.

Will this bug ever been fixed (15 years old) or will we have to apply the aforementioned fix on every update?