cannot see text, only line art

[ewy]

Binary package hint: evince

Sometimes when I open a pdf the text is completely missing. I can highlight sections where text should be, but the text itself does not display (white on white?). I can copy the highlighted text, and it pastes properly into other programs, but I cannot view it in Evince.

Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Oct 20 20:39:44 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evince
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=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evince
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-21-generic i686

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you add an example to the bug?

[ewy (elliottyates)]

This behaviour appeared to be directly related to zero available disk space on root partition. On fixing the space problem, the Evince problem seems to be gone as well. This is not a bug, just a symptom of a larger underlying error. However, better handling or user notification would have been nice. Keep up the good work! Thanks.

[Enrique Perez-Terron (aioe)]

The attached file shows correctly in xpdf, but in evince only the logo and the horizontal lines show.

[Enrique Perez-Terron (aioe)]

Object to status "invalid". My system has no file systems out of space:

$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 24607172 6438208 16918964 28% /
none 506692 308 506384 1% /dev
none 511208 216 510992 1% /dev/shm
none 511208 292 510916 1% /var/run
none 511208 0 511208 0% /var/lock
none 511208 0 511208 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sda7 24607172 7656580 15700592 33% /home
/dev/sda8 21533936 4947368 15492700 25% /var

I have several files from the same source, and they all behave the same way. Other pdf files do display correctly in Evince, I have tried alternating between files and between viewers.

This bug is not insignificant; it renders Evince completely unusable to read my bank statements.

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

On Maverick it displays properly, but glitches when you select anything. So there's an unfixed underlying bug.

[Mathieu MD (mathieu.md)]

The PDF uploaded by Enrique is displayed correctly by Evince 2.32.0 on Ubuntu 11.4. I think that this bug "cannot see text, only line art" could be closed.

However, as reported Mechanical snail, when selecting text the display of selected text become garbage (not really garbage, as you can see on the attached screenshot; seems to be a problem of size and color...). But the selected text can be copied/pasted in a text editor correctly. If its an Evince bug -- and if it's not a problem during the creation of this PDF -- it'd be better reported by a new bug report.

[Alex Peters (alex-peters)]

This problem persists on Ubuntu 11.10, as demonstrated by the attached screen shot.

The screen shot shows the hidden text selected. In both selected and unselected states, the text is not visible.

Removing previously decided importance level to encourage re-evaluation in light of comments made since the bug was opened.

[Alex Peters (alex-peters)]

...okay, unable to change the importance.

After running Evince via the terminal, I see these errors repeatedly:

$ evince 5-1-MetrorailUserRequirementSpecification.pdf
Error: Cannot open '/home/lx/.fonts/arial.ttf'
Error: failed to load truetype font

some font thing failed
...
Error: Cannot open '/home/lx/.fonts/arialbd.ttf'
Error: failed to load truetype font

some font thing failed

Both of these fonts appear to have appropriate permissions:

$ ls -l /home/lx/.fonts/arial{,bd}.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 lx root 352224 2007-11-13 17:50 /home/lx/.fonts/arialbd.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 lx root 367112 2007-11-13 17:50 /home/lx/.fonts/arial.ttf

[penalvch (penalvch)]

As per https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince/+bug/286774/comments/3 .