Dear Hojia list, here's more of the conversation, as some participants are not subscribed so couldn't post. Thread is on http://news.gmane.org/group/gmane.org.user-groups.taiwan.tossug.hojia
>>>>> "D" == Derek B Noonburg <der...@foolabs.com> writes: D> On 2010 Nov 17, Kan-Ru Chen wrote: >> jida...@jidanni.org writes: >> >>> Can anybody read the Chinese these days with xpdf anymore? >>> wget -O x.pdf >>> http://www1.hl.gov.tw/bus/upload/%AA%E1%BD%AC%AB%C8%B9B%A5%FA%C2%D7%BDu%AE%C9%B6%A1%AA%ED.pdf >>> xpdf x.pdf >>> See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=591094 >>> Should I dump xpdf and instead use what? >>> Thanks. >> >> I could confirm the Chinese characters were broken inside my evince. >> >> I guess, since poppler disabled hinting, the bytecode interpreter wasn't >> used at all. IIRC, it was disabled for correctness or better print >> quality, because grid fitting is not suitable for printing. I used to >> have a patched version installed locally some time ago. >> >> Screenshot attached. D> In my experience, that sort of broken output for Chinese glyphs is D> always due to a missing or disabled bytecode interpreter in FreeType. D> There are two ways that can happen: D> (1) FreeType was built with the bytecode interpreter disabled. This was D> the default before 2.4 (and the 2.4.x versions can still be configured D> this way, but I'm not sure why anyone would do that). Later 2.3.x D> versions (I think) of FreeType have a workaround that tries to fix D> Chinese fonts based on their name. This may or may not work, depending D> on exactly how the font was embedded in the PDF file. I.e., FreeType D> 2.4.x should always work; FreeType 2.3.x may or may not work. D> (2) FreeType hinting was disabled. In Xpdf 3.02, there is a D> compile-time check for FreeType's bytecode interpreter -- if the D> interpreter is available, then hinting is enabled, otherwise hinting is D> disabled. This means that, if Xpdf 3.02 is compiled with a 2.3.x D> version of FreeType without the bytecode interpreter, and then FreeType D> is later upgraded to 2.4.x, then Xpdf will still disable hinting. D> I believe some Linux distributions (and code forks, like Poppler) may D> also modify the Xpdf code to disable hinting. (Certain fonts look D> better when FreeType's auto-hinting is disabled.) D> If you want to debug the problem, I would recommend doing this: D> (1) Download the Xpdf binaries from my ftp site. They're staticly D> linked to FreeType (a 2.3.x version, with the bytecode interpreter D> enabled). You can just unpack the tar file in /tmp and run it from D> there -- no need to install anything. If that displays the Chinese text D> correctly, then the problem is almost certainly as described above. D> (2) Install FreeType 2.4.x, and make sure the bytecode interpreter is D> enabled. Build Xpdf 3.02pl5 from the unmodified source code from my ftp D> site. If that works, then my guess is that the issue is one of: D> (a) The Xpdf package released by your distribution has been modified D> to disable hinting D> (b) The Xpdf package released by your distribution was built with D> FreeType 2.3.x with the bytecode interpreter disabled (and not D> re-built after FreeType was upgraded to 2.4.x). D> The next release of Xpdf (3.03) will have a run-time option (xpdfrc D> setting) to enable/disable FreeType hinting. Of course, I can't control D> modifications made by Debian packagers, the Poppler project, etc. D> - Derek Above my head, but I sure hope the Debian people will recompile with all those expired-patent things etc. included this time. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
