Text does not display in Evince or other pdf viewers

[dagger10k]

Binary package hint: evince

I just upgraded to Karmic Koala 9.10 from 9.04.

Before upgrading, I was able to view the pdf at http://www.accuratepowder.com/data/Acc%20Guide%20v3.3%20version.pdf
without any problems.

Now, when I open it in Evince (or xpdf, or epdfview), most of the text is not visible. Specifically the load data that is found in charts for most of the document.

I have verified that the same file displays correctly in Windows XP. Another computer using Karmic Koala also does not display the text.

It seemed to be a font problem from looking at the error messages, so I tried installing all the windows fonts I have into Ubuntu using the instructions found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts

The fonts installed successfully, but the text in the document still does not display.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

Confirming, here's the stderr messages:
Error: Missing or invalid Encoding entry in Type 0 font
Error: Unknown font tag 'C0_0'
Error (1610894): No font in show/space
Error (1610928): No font in show/space
Error: Unknown font tag 'C0_0'
Error (1610976): No font in show/space
Error (1611004): No font in show
Error: Unknown font tag 'C0_0'
Error (1615175): No font in show/space
Error (1615213): No font in show/space
Error: Missing or invalid Encoding entry in Type 0 font
Error: Unknown font tag 'C0_0'
Error (1610894): No font in show/space
Error (1610928): No font in show/space
Error: Unknown font tag 'C0_0'
Error (1610976): No font in show/space
Error (1611004): No font in show
Error: Unknown font tag 'C0_0'
Error (1615175): No font in show/space
Error (1615213): No font in show/space

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

Same rendering issue with Okular. Acroread and Xpdf (!!!) render correctly...

[noremac (roger-the-big-pink-fish)]

same here, but evince worked fine until today. gimp is also a no go but xpdf works fine.

[Per Ångström (autark)]

I can confirm this on Lucid Lynx Alpha 1+. This happens to me with the financial statements from my savings company, and it has been quite annoying not to able to read them without booting into Windows. This bug led me to discover xpdf, which apparently is able to cope with missing fonts, whereas evince silently fails (only if I start evince from the command line can I see all the error messages).

This is quite a serious bug; currently the importance is Low, which is way too low. How can I trust that evince is not silently ignoring some text in my documents? At the very least, evince should warn the user that the some text in the document is not being displayed, but I don't think it's unreasonable to use some other font instead (like xpdf apparently does).

The same goes for okular and gimp (the similarity of the console error output indicates that they share the same pdf reading component).

[Per Ångström (autark)]

Attaching screenshot of my monthly financial statement, as displayed by Evince. I would upload the document if it didn't contain sensitive data.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

also with the files:
http://www.nesteq.net/assets/dl/dsheets/datasheet_asm_xzero_eng.pdf
http://www.nesteq.net/assets/dl/manuals/asm_xzero_manual_revision_1_5.pdf

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

similar bug upstream, though it is marked fixed

[pyluyten (samadhi)]

No issue here (tables display fine and no warning )

 I note some cells are merged.

evince.i686 2.30.3-1.fc13
poppler.i686 0.12.4-2.fc13

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

this is what i see in acroread and evince(screenshot from lucid, but it looks the same in maverick too).

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

simple fix install poppler-data

now. why is this not installed by default

[Timmy Shih Jun Yee (shijun)]

Historically, poppler-data couldn't be installed by default when it was non-free three years ago (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince/+bug/48708/comments/7). However, recently it's been considered free enough to be in universe (since Lucid). It's also been recently admitted into the main repository (see bug 530452), so there's a pretty good chance that Evince can depend on poppler-data.

(Marking this as a duplicate of bug 616321.)

[Per Ångström (autark)]

I have a PDF that is displayed with important parts missing, without evince (2.32.0) reporting any error in its GUI. Below is the output when opened from the command line. I'm unwilling to upload the file as it contains personal data.

I have poppler-data installed; therefore this bug is not a duplicate of bug #616321. The real bug is that evince does not make it obvious to the user that it unable to display all data contained in the document.

Error: PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table...
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...
Error: failed to load truetype font

some font thing failed
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...
Error: failed to load truetype font

some font thing failed
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...
Error: Found a bad table definition on true type definition, trying to continue...
Error: failed to load truetype font
[repeated a zillion times]

[Per Ångström (autark)]

Could somebody please raise the importance of this bug? It is tantamount to a data-loss bug.

[Per Ångström (autark)]

I downloaded Acroread for Linux and opened the troublesome document. Acroread displays an error message about not being able to extract embedded font Arial Bold but seems to display all text anyway. Apparently, acroread uses a fallback strategy when it encounters fonts it cannot display.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

does installing poppler-data workaround the issue? do you still get the bug?

[Per Ångström (autark)]

On 2011-12-07 15:00, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> does installing poppler-data workaround the issue? do you still get the
> bug?
I have poppler-data installed already; that solves some other problems
but not this one. I'm still on 10.10, so nothing has changed. I'll
report back when I've had time to try it in 11.10.

[Mikael Hjelm (j-m-hjelm)]

Since the first link does not work i am adding another one that fails.
http://www.elna.co.jp/en/capacitor/double_layer/catalog/pdf/dbn_e.pdf

[Mikael Hjelm (j-m-hjelm)]

Yes poppler data workaround siolved the link in #19. So my problem is not the same as this bug sorry.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

dagger10k, thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. Karmic reached EOL on April 30, 2011.
See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Is this an issue on a supported release? If so, please reopen this report, attach a document this is reproducible with (not post a URL), and execute the following at a terminal:
apport-collect 470157