Evince refuses to load remote pdf files (http) which it will load nicely once they are downloaded.

[Christine]

Binary package hint: evince

Evince refuses to load remote pdf files (http) which it will load nicely once they are downloaded.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Oct 8 12:11:38 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evince
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: evince 2.28.0-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.40-generic
SourcePackage: evince
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic x86_64
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2038): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2038): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2075): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (nautilus:2087): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (gnome-panel:2073): Gdk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.18.2/gdk/x11/gdkdrawable-x11.c:952 drawable is not a pixmap or window

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Michael Zaugg (AOI) (it-oas)]

* Is this reproducible?

Yes.

 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
If you have a remote PDF file with relative links to an other file on the server, evince can not open it.

I investigated on this and it seems that evince can handle this properly if the file is opend directly (e.g. via shell # evince http://www.example.org/pathto/file.pdf).
But when open a pdf file via browser while surfing (in my case Firefox) it doesn't pass the url to evince but the path to the downloaded file. To fix this, the browser should only pass the url to the external application.

* Expected behaviour
As Adobe Reader BrowserPlugin: Render the pdf 'on the server'. Then the relative links to others documents on the server would work.
And: Do not open relative linked Documents in an new window, replace the existing document instead.

* Testcase
I've made a simple testcase with two files. Extract those into a local folder. Open Mainfile.pdf and click on the link. Second_file.pdf is (as expected) opend in an new window.
Now upload the files to a server and open Mainfile.pdf on the Server via Browser.

[Michael Zaugg (AOI) (it-oas)]

To achieve 'direct rendering' of a PDF file in Firefox you can use mozplugger with the 'stream' flag set. But the drawback that evince is open relative paths to an other pdf in a new window remains (should I open a new Bug concerning this?)

Example /etc/mozpluggerrc
---------------------------
application/pdf:pdf:PDF file
application/x-pdf:pdf:PDF file
text/pdf:pdf:PDF file
text/x-pdf:pdf:PDF file
 repeat noisy swallow(evince) fill stream: evince "$file"
 ACROREAD()
 repeat noisy swallow(kpdf) fill: kpdf "$file"
 repeat noisy swallow(Xpdf) fill: xpdf -g +9000+9000 "$file"
 repeat noisy swallow(okular) fill: okular "$file"
 GV()
 repeat noisy fill exits stream: evince "$file"
---------------------------