interoperability problem between libspectre 0.2.7 and ghostscript >9.05

[M S Bhaskar]

qpdfview 0.4.3-1 doesn't open ps and eps files properly in ubuntu 13.10. I've updated my computer but still the problem persists. I've tested these files in another computer with ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed in it. The files opened there without any problem.

[Benjamin Eltzner (b-eltzner)]

Hi, it would be great, if you could append some of the problematic files to this bug report, so I can confirm the problem and forward them to the developer of qpdfview for reference. In Ubuntu 12.04, qpdfview is not in the repositories, so I guess you used the default pdf viewer (evince)?

[M S Bhaskar (mithipatisiva9)]

Hi Benjamin

I tried opening my ps and eps files with evince first. It did not work properly. The problem is the same. The file opens when rotated by +90 deg ( ctrl+ right ) or -90 deg ( ctrl+ left ) but not otherwise. So I thought to try out alternative applications like qpdfview.

[M S Bhaskar (mithipatisiva9)]

a small clarification to my previous comment. Both evince and qpdfview do not work properly in updated version ( 23 jan 2014 ) of ubuntu 13.10.

[Benjamin Eltzner (b-eltzner)]

Hmm, this is really odd. Your description (especially the fact that evince and qpdfview are both affected) points towards a bug in the libspectre1 library. The version in Ubuntu 13.10 is 0.2.7-2ubuntu1 (http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/libspectre1). Now comes the strange part: I am using debian unstable and that has version 0.27-2 (http://packages.debian.org/sid/libspectre1) and I can view the file you attached on my system without problems.

So unless the Ubuntu packagers committed some major blunder, the problem does not appear to reside in the library. I am using daily builds of qpdfview from a PPA. Would you be willing to try the version from this PPA: https://code.launchpad.net/~adamreichold/qpdfview/dailydeb just to confirm that the problem still occurs in the newest version?

[Benjamin Eltzner (b-eltzner)]

Addendum: Apparently, the only change in the Ubuntu package is the use of autoreconf. However, a superficial glance at the library files reveals that the Debian version is so 5 kB larger than the Ubuntu version. If you can confirm the problem with a daily build of qpdfview, I think this bug should be assigned to the libspectre package.

[Adam Reichold (adamreichold)]

Hello,

possibly not overly helpful, but I what to add that libspectre is just a thin and sometimes fragile wrapper around Ghostscript. So even if libspectre did not change, maybe Ghostscript did and libspectre did not adjust accordingly? Also libspectre does tend to print some sometimes useful error codes/messages to standard error, so maybe running Evince or qpdfview from a Terminal might help?

Best regards, Adam.

[Adam Reichold (adamreichold)]

(I am also willing to help to find out if the problem maybe in qpdfview's use of libspectre still, but for that an example file would be necessary.)

[Adam Reichold (adamreichold)]

Sorry, as Benjamin pointed out to me, there is an EPS file attached which I overlooked. Sorry for that. Running a current Arch Linux and qpdfview's trunk, the file opens and renders, but it does not rotate correctly. According to [1] this can't be helped with pure PostScript documents sometimes, but I can't judge whether this the case here.

Not as a solution, but as a workaround: Have you tried setting up gnuplot to directly produce e.g. PDF output?

[1] http://www.ghostscript.com/pipermail/bug-gs/2001-August/000655.html

[Benjamin Eltzner (b-eltzner)]

As this seems to be an interoperability problem between libspectre and ghostscript >9.05 I set this to "invalid" for qpdfview and added libspectre as an affected project. Unfortunately, it seems that libspectre has been in limbo for quite some time, so this problem might go unresolved for quite some time.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.