Strange PDF file problem using Lucide...

[Pete]

Hi All

I have a silly PDF problem introduced by my ISP who is now producing my bills in PDF format.
As I cannot read the bills online I have been downloading them to view with Lucide 1.5.0 GA.
However, something has changed with the PDF files as I cannot view my later Bills using Lucide; all that is displayed are blank pages.

I have checked the Document Info available via the Lucide menu item View.

The older bills I can view all have this Document Info:-

Document: STANDARD.pdf
Format: PDF-1.7
Creator: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Producer: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Created: 01/01/2019  3:02:19 PM
Modified: 01/01/2019  3:02:19 PM


The pdfs that cannot be  vewed in Lucide have the same Docment Info:-

Document: 01062019.pdf
Format: PDF-1.7
Creator: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Producer: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Created: 01/06/2019  3:08:37 PM
Modified: 01/06/2019  3:08:37 PM

Obviously the values of Document, Created and Modified are different for each bill but the Format, Creator and Producer values are the same.

As the Format, Creator and Producer values are the same for Bills I can view with Lucide and those I cannot does anyone have any ideas on what the difference between the Bills could be and how to view those Bills that cannot be viewed in Lucide?


Thanks for any help.

Pete

[ivan]

Hi Pete,

A couple of things that may, or may not help.

If you open the the PDF with EPM.EXE are the headers and endings the same between those you can read and those you can't?

Have you tried opening them with GSVIEW?  I have found that it gives a somewhat cryptic error message if ti can't read a PDF which might give a clue as to the problem

And an extra.  Have you tried an older version of Lucide?  I'm running Lucide 1.3.5GA because some of the newer versions barf on some of the PDF manuals I use.
 

[Pete]

Hi ivan

Just tested GSView which has the same problem as Lucide, just blank pages displayed.

Note: Both Lucide and GSView open the file without any error messages and display *blank* pages. Lucide can retrieve Document Info whereas GSView cannot.

Comparing the file that does display in both Lucide and GSView with the file that does not display using text editor the headers look identical however the endings are very different:-

Standard.pdf displays fine in both apps and has this ending:-

>>
startxref
131746
%%EOF
í─L¿k¶
`

01062019.pdf does not display in Lucide or GSView and has this ending:-

>>
st┐äóÍ│8zvþ¥U▄£ËÝÕ;Pwartxref
131912
%%EOF


A little editing to that file ending resulting in

>>
startxref
131912
%%EOF
í─L¿k¶
`

I saved the edited file as test.pdf and then tried opening it in both Lucide and GSView. Blank pages are displayed by both apps so maybe it is not the difference in the endings...

Guess I have Lucide 1.3.5 somewhere amongst my backups so will have to dig it out and test.


Regards

Pete

[Eugene Gorbunoff]

Maybe new pdf files don't include fonts.. you can see the contents in Windows, but get empty pages in OS/2,
we have this problems with cyrillic pdf files

[ivan]

Hi Pete, 

The ending with symbols after the %%EOF doesn't appear to be correct, at least looking at random samples from my PDF collection.

examples;

my ISP bill header:

%PDF-1.4
%ÃýÅó
5 0 obj
<</Length 6 0 R/Filter /FlateDecode>>
stream

Same bill ending:

trailer
<< /Size 42 /Root 1 0 R /Info 2 0 R
/ID [<910210598AA2CBBE0AF0C0823BDA8D74><910210598AA2CBBE0AF0C0823BDA8D74>]
>>
startxref
25067
%%EOF

and the ending from my electricity bills:

endstream
endobj
startxref
116
%%EOF


OK, all of my PDF files start with either %PDF-1.4 or %PDF-1.5 while yours are %PDF-1.7.  If I get a chance tomorrow I will ask a friend that produces PDF files at work, if there are ant strange foibles with 1.7 as compared to 1.4.  I know he has a copy of the various PDF standards.
 

[Eduardo Vila Echagüe]

Have you tried qpdfview?

[Pete]

Hi Eduardo

I have qpdfview 4.15 installed from zip package but cannot run it.

Sadly qpdfview seems to be coded to use CUPS.DLL which does not exist on a system with CUPS2.x installed from zip files. Copying the existing CUPS20.DLL file to CUPS.DLL and having a LIBPATH entry pointing to the directory containing the CUPS.DLL file does not resolve the problem .

I see qpdfview 4.17-6beta2 is available via ANPM(rpm-yum) but have no intention of installing that as it also wants to download and install the cups rpm packages which are simply not required as I already have a working cups installation.

So, no I have not tried qpdfview but simply because it does not work at all.


Regards

Pete

[David Graser]

eCSoft/2 does an excellent job of explaining what is needed.

https://ecsoft2.org/qpdfview

It requires a lot.  I used the the quick install listing all the prerequisites and it works fine.

[ivan]

Hi David,

You missed Pete's  point that he has an optimal CUPS install working and QPDFVIEW wants to install cups over what he has working it is a no-no.

Hi Pete,

My friend is down in Spain solving IT problems but will get back to me as soon as he gets home.

[roberto]

I can think of one thing, try to rename the file, with basic, not special characters.
saludos

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

When you open the PDF with Lucide and select 'View=>Fonts Info', do you see anything?

I'm curious about whether the document uses embeded or system fonts?

I'm also assuming that you are using the lupplr PDF plugin based on teh poppler library 0.59.0?

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Hi Pete,

...I see qpdfview 4.17-6beta2 is available via ANPM(rpm-yum) but have no intention of installing that as it also wants to download and install the cups rpm packages which are simply not required as I already have a working cups installation...

I have 0.4.17.beta2 installed here, but the non-RPM one b/c I didn't want to actually install CUPS since my Brother printer is nearly fully supported using the PScript driver.

Anyways, the ZIP filename i pulled was qpdfview-0_4_17-6beta2_oc00.zip, found on the ZIP side of the repository I believe.

[xynixme]

I'm also assuming that you are using the lupplr PDF plugin based on teh poppler library 0.59.0?

BTW, does Lucide 1.3.5 have any special requirements? My copy (eCS 1.2, i.e. no CUPS) is appending text to POPUPLOG.OS2 when the number of it's being executed isn't an even number. So I have to open files twice.

Code: [Select]

LUCIDE.EXE
c0010003
1e92f0c1
P1=00000003  P2=XXXXXXXX  P3=XXXXXXXX  P4=XXXXXXXX 
EAX=02e3beba  EBX=0001154c  ECX=025f1830  EDX=02e341b8
ESI=00000618  EDI=00002ef3 
DS=0053  DSACC=f0f3  DSLIM=ffffffff 
ES=0053  ESACC=f0f3  ESLIM=ffffffff 
FS=150b  FSACC=00f3  FSLIM=00000030
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********
CS:EIP=005b:11bf77a4  CSACC=f0df  CSLIM=ffffffff
SS:ESP=0053:0012f854  SSACC=f0f3  SSLIM=ffffffff
EBP=02e10000  FLG=00012202

PMMERGE.DLL 0004:000ff0c1

[Pete]

Hi Dariusz

'View=>Fonts Info' gives me a list of embedded fonts.

Yes, poppler 0.59.0-3 installed.

I tried qpdfview-0_4_17-6beta2_oc00.zip which looks like it needs to be unzipped into the unixroot - something I would rather avoid much preferring to keep applications within their own directory structure than dumped into /bin and /lib etc.

Tried unzipping it and copying files into a qpdfview directory with the addition of a copy of cups20.dll renamed to cups.dll and qpdfview actually starts. Sadly it cannot open any pdf files as it cannot find plugins. I suspect this is because they are not within the unixroot structure but will not be bothering to investigate further.


Regards

Pete

[xynixme]

Earlier the same here, w.r.t. qpdfview. No plugins found, no useless Unix directory structures installed, and no clue that it's possibly only a solution for the happy few.