itext: *.afm files missing from com.lowagie.text.pdf.fonts

[Lars Volker]

Binary package hint: pdftk

Running latest pdftk causes an error to happen:

pdftk Vorlage.pdf fill_form gen.fdf output filled.pdfHelvetica not found as resource. (The *.afm files must exist as resources in the package com.lowagie.text.pdf.fonts)
Unhandled Java Exception:
ExceptionConverter: com.lowagie.text.DocumentException: Helvetica not found as resource. (The *.afm files must exist as resources in the package com.lowagie.text.pdf.fonts)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.Type1Font.<init>(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.BaseFont.createFont(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.BaseFont.createFont(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.BaseFont.createFont(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.DocumentFont.doType1TT(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.DocumentFont.<init>(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.AcroFields.decodeGenericDictionary(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.AcroFields.getAppearance(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.AcroFields.setField(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.AcroFields.setField(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)
   at com.lowagie.text.pdf.AcroFields.setFields(itext-2.1.5.jar.so)

The fdf-file was created with generate_fdf.

I found the same bug here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=494785

Can this issue exist in karmic as well?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Oct 13 19:37:18 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: pdftk 1.41+dfsg-1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-13.43-generic
SourcePackage: pdftk
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-13-generic x86_64

[Johann Felix Soden (johfel)]

Adding /usr/share/java/itext.jar to my_classpath in patch debian/patches/set_classpath solves the problem.

[Samuel Cantrell (samcan)]

I confirm Johann Felix Soden's experience; bug affected me, I rebuilt package and modified patch, and installed. Tested filling the form, and it works.

Thank you!

[Alan Orth (aorth)]

I also confirm that Johann Soden's tip fixes this bug. Get the source and Ubuntu patches from http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/pdftk, then recompile (the "Debian way" using dpkg-buildpackage, for any curious readers who don't know). Working great!

[fptmark (markm-visionsw)]

I can also confirm that the tip allows pdftk to build, however I am getting a run time error when doing a fill_form operation on a specific pdf using an xfdf as input (it works fine for my other pdf's). The error message is:

GC Warning: Repeated allocation of very large block (appr. size 4198400):
 May lead to memory leak and poor performance.
GC Warning: Repeated allocation of very large block (appr. size 1646592):
 May lead to memory leak and poor performance.

Note the size and number of warnings (sometimes 2 and others 3) varies for the same pdf file. It is not the file size as the one that fails is about 0.5MB while I have larger files that work fine.

[andersvinther (anders-vinther)]

For people like me who are a bit challenged adding patches there is a detailed guide on how to do this here: http://www.trancefussion.com/blog/?p=101

[Johann Felix Soden (johfel)]

This bug was fixed in pdftk 1.41+dfsg-4. Lucid includes pdftk 1.41+dfsg-7.