Evince should fall back to linear display if DSC-based random access on .PS file fails

[Alexandre Otto Strube]

Binary package hint: evince

When I open the following ps file in evince, it works for some pages, then it suddenly stops working. Going to the middle of the file makes it show blank pages or a huge "LOADING".

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Thanks for your bug report. Which version of Ubuntu and evince do you use?

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I can imagine that this is simply a problem of the size? Seeking through 77,8MB is not exactly fast, hm? :)

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Hum... were you able to view it in any other viewer? gnome-gv and kghostview failed on me too - the best I got out of them were 8 pages in a row.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

'ps2pdf' brings it down to a 3.5MB random-access PDF that works fine.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

  $ evince tesis.ps
  ...
  %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: AddT42Char ]%%
  ESP Ghostscript 815.02: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

  $ evince tesis.ps
  %%[ ProductName: ESP Ghostscript ]%%
  %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: Pscript_WinNT_Compat ]%%
  ESP Ghostscript 815.02: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

certainly seems to be something related to seeking; is evince is started on the first page and the file displayed linearly, things appear to be (mostly?) fine. If evince /remembers/ that last time you closed that file it was on page 176, then evince starts on page 176 and complains immediately.

It could be that the two commands in questions are not correctly marked as macros sets by PostScript DSC marks, so are only ever loaded when the fine is read linearly and not when the file is randomly accessed using the DSC (Document Structuring Conventions) markup.

[Alexandre Otto Strube (surak)]

> I can imagine that this is simply a problem of the size?
> Seeking through 77,8MB is not exactly fast, hm? :)

I don't think so. If I open it and tell it to go to page 90, for instance, it goes almost intantly. Then, after browsing some pages, it suddenly stops.

> Which version of Ubuntu and evince do you use?

Edgy fully updated.
evince 0.6.1-0ubuntu1
gs-esp 8.15.2.dfsg.0

> Hum... were you able to view it in any other viewer?

gs-esp -sDEVICE=x11 tesis.ps works. But not in a random way.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

I'm now fairly certain that the problem is to do with (a) incorrect DSC (Document Structuring Convention) information, (b) making use of the bad DSC and attempting random access.

There's already some bugs in this file;

  %%BeginResource: file Pscript_WinNT_VMErrorHandler 5.0 0

but:

  %%+ procset Pscript_WinNT_VMErrorHandler 5.0 0

The resource is declared as a 'file' and referenced as a 'procset'.

The other errors are because functions are used called, that are inside a Resource, and the Resource is not pulled in... (AFAICT).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Forwarded upstream:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366616

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This should be fixed in Jaunty now. Thanks for reporting.