Re: mupdf (was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-20 Thread Mathieu Malaterre
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Jens Oliver John li...@2ion.de wrote:
 $ apt-cache show mupdf
 MuPDF is a lightweight PDF viewer and toolkit written in portable C.
 (...)

 The mupdf PDF reader is supposed to be minimal and makes on me the impression 
 of
 being more a reference implementation using the mupdf library.

 A more featureful but still light PDF reader, which is able to utilize mupdf 
 as
 the rendering backend, is zathura (in Debian) with the mupdf rendering backend
 (not in Debian [1]).

 The zathura upstream is very lively and is constantly gaining features.

 It may be my personal perception, but the fidelity of the PDF rendering in 
 mupdf
 is *vastly* superior to xpdf and all the PDF readers (evince, okular ...) 
 which
 use libpoppler at this point, resulting in mupdf/libmupdf being AFIK the only
 native and free PDF reader available for Linux with a rendering engine that 
 can
 rival the proprietary ones like acrobat (in quality, not feature parity).

 I therefore suggest packaging zathura with the zathura-pdf-mupdf plugin.

aka #731447


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/ca+7wusyynqe+f871fxrul4a78pzkmqxtfmplkeu9nyojvtz...@mail.gmail.com



Re: mupdf (was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-20 Thread Sebastian Ramacher
On 2014-01-20 12:54:30, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
 On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Jens Oliver John li...@2ion.de wrote:
  $ apt-cache show mupdf
  MuPDF is a lightweight PDF viewer and toolkit written in portable C.
  (...)
 
  The mupdf PDF reader is supposed to be minimal and makes on me the 
  impression of
  being more a reference implementation using the mupdf library.
 
  A more featureful but still light PDF reader, which is able to utilize 
  mupdf as
  the rendering backend, is zathura (in Debian) with the mupdf rendering 
  backend
  (not in Debian [1]).
 
  The zathura upstream is very lively and is constantly gaining features.
 
  It may be my personal perception, but the fidelity of the PDF rendering in 
  mupdf
  is *vastly* superior to xpdf and all the PDF readers (evince, okular ...) 
  which
  use libpoppler at this point, resulting in mupdf/libmupdf being AFIK the 
  only
  native and free PDF reader available for Linux with a rendering engine that 
  can
  rival the proprietary ones like acrobat (in quality, not feature parity).
 
  I therefore suggest packaging zathura with the zathura-pdf-mupdf plugin.
 
 aka #731447

This is blocked by a proper fix for #617253. Ideally, mupdf would start
to provide a shared library (#719351) and commit to a somewhat stable
API. mupdf needs to get in a better shape before zathura-pdf-mupdf can
be packaged.

Regards
-- 
Sebastian Ramacher


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


mupdf (was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-19 Thread Vincent Lefevre
On 2014-01-13 10:43:50 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
 While someone could fix the package, you may want to consider not doing
 so.  After running into endless bugs in xpdf, I personally switched to
 mupdf for a light-weight PDF reader and found it superior in every respect
 except for the fact that it doesn't, so far as I can tell, support
 printing.  So I use mupdf to view PDF documents, and on the rare occasion
 that I want to print one, I open it in gv (which I find clunkier, but
 which generally works fine and prints).

I've just had a look at it, and found that it misses some important
features present in xpdf, e.g.
* PDF bookmarks.
* Permament fit page (i.e. when one resizes the window or with the
  fullscreen toggle), and BTW, one has to try both W and H.
* Copy with the left button (the right button is hardly usable with
  a trackpad for dragging).

So, it can't be seen as a good replacement for xpdf. Other PDF viewers
have their own drawbacks as well.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre vinc...@vinc17.net - Web: http://www.vinc17.net/
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.net/blog/
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140119233924.ga29...@xvii.vinc17.org



Re: mupdf (was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-19 Thread Marco d'Itri
On Jan 20, Vincent Lefevre vinc...@vinc17.net wrote:

 I've just had a look at it, and found that it misses some important
 features present in xpdf, e.g.
Let me add:
* an higher zoom level

-- 
ciao,
Marco


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Re: mupdf (was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-19 Thread Jens Oliver John
 $ apt-cache show mupdf
 MuPDF is a lightweight PDF viewer and toolkit written in portable C.
 (...)

The mupdf PDF reader is supposed to be minimal and makes on me the impression of
being more a reference implementation using the mupdf library.

A more featureful but still light PDF reader, which is able to utilize mupdf as
the rendering backend, is zathura (in Debian) with the mupdf rendering backend
(not in Debian [1]).

The zathura upstream is very lively and is constantly gaining features.

It may be my personal perception, but the fidelity of the PDF rendering in mupdf
is *vastly* superior to xpdf and all the PDF readers (evince, okular ...) which
use libpoppler at this point, resulting in mupdf/libmupdf being AFIK the only
native and free PDF reader available for Linux with a rendering engine that can
rival the proprietary ones like acrobat (in quality, not feature parity).

I therefore suggest packaging zathura with the zathura-pdf-mupdf plugin.

Regards,
Jens.

--
[1] http://pwmt.org/projects/zathura/plugins/zathura-pdf-mupdf/

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 12:39:24AM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
 On 2014-01-13 10:43:50 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
  While someone could fix the package, you may want to consider not doing
  so.  After running into endless bugs in xpdf, I personally switched to
  mupdf for a light-weight PDF reader and found it superior in every respect
  except for the fact that it doesn't, so far as I can tell, support
  printing.  So I use mupdf to view PDF documents, and on the rare occasion
  that I want to print one, I open it in gv (which I find clunkier, but
  which generally works fine and prints).
 
 I've just had a look at it, and found that it misses some important
 features present in xpdf, e.g.
 * PDF bookmarks.
 * Permament fit page (i.e. when one resizes the window or with the
   fullscreen toggle), and BTW, one has to try both W and H.
 * Copy with the left button (the right button is hardly usable with
   a trackpad for dragging).
 
 So, it can't be seen as a good replacement for xpdf. Other PDF viewers
 have their own drawbacks as well.
 
 -- 
 Vincent Lefèvre vinc...@vinc17.net - Web: http://www.vinc17.net/
 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.net/blog/
 Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
 
 
 -- 
 To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
 with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
 Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140119233924.ga29...@xvii.vinc17.org
 


pgpWClaiaI5Ey.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: xpdf removed from testing? - Back again?

2014-01-16 Thread Svante Signell
On Wed, 2014-01-15 at 22:09 +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
 On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 17:47 +, Ian Jackson wrote:
  Svante Signell writes (Re: xpdf removed from testing?):
   On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.
   
   OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
   there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
   interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
   it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?
  
  If the existing maintainer doesn't have the effort to stop the package
  being removed from testing then clearly they need help.
 
 Noted, action taken!
 
  If you provide patches, with a view to xpdf staying in the archive,
  you should probably be prepared for the maintainer to offer you the
  package :-).
 
 I might be interested to continue working on this package, as a start
 with the maintainers blessing, see below.
 
  I would love to help but my I'm out of the special waterproof tuits
  required for swamp-draining.  Good luck.
 Thanks!
 
 Yay, xpdf builds again (and prints) :-)
 
 I cleaned out the duplicated code between xpdf and poppler (which is a
 continuation of xpdf becoming a PDF rendering library). Some more
 cleaning is still needed, to actually remove all irrelevant code (and
 update relevant code). Is it possible to create a new code base from my
 changes and the many patches?
 
 The patched version of xpdf has been tested with both libpoppler19
 (0.18.4-10) and libpoppler37 (0.22.5-3). libfontconfig version is
 2.11.0-2.

Additionally, the build system needs an upgrade to use auto{,re}conf,
standards version 3.9.5, etc. I'm willing to do that too. Should I send
a mega-patch against 3.0.3-11 in a bug report or is there a better
way?  



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389860201.9619.53.ca...@g3620.my.own.domain



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-16 Thread Simon McVittie
On 15/01/14 21:09, Svante Signell wrote:
 I cleaned out the duplicated code between xpdf and poppler (which is a
 continuation of xpdf becoming a PDF rendering library). Some more
 cleaning is still needed, to actually remove all irrelevant code (and
 update relevant code). Is it possible to create a new code base from my
 changes and the many patches?

This (and the build-system fixing you mentioned in another mail) sounds
like a job for a new upstream project, rather than something that is
in-scope for Debian packaging. If you[1] want to be its upstream
maintainer, I would suggest either forking xpdf under a new name[2] of
your choice, or asking its (former?) upstream maintainers to give you
custody of the official continuation of xpdf.

If nobody wants to be the de facto upstream maintainer of this fork,
then I don't think it's appropriate to keep it in Debian either: I think
there's a limit to the sort of changes that it's appropriate to make via
distro patches. Refactoring and deleting unnecessary code is a great
thing to do as an upstream, but not as a distributor.

If, as an upstream, your only release mechanism is via Debian, that's
your decision, of course; but even if it is, I think a fork that behaves
like its own upstream project should be identified as such.

I haven't used xpdf for years, so I have no informed opinion on the
choice between it's worth taking over and fixing vs. let it die,
switch to something else.

S

[1] all uses of you refer to any prospective maintainer, not just Svante

[2] not necessarily a new name for the package/binary (particularly if
the current upstream is completely dormant), but it'd be polite to at
least have a conventional name for your version in its documentation,
similar to the way {AGPL,Aladdin,ESP,GNU} Ghostscript are labelled


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52d7cd2d@debian.org



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-15 Thread Svante Signell
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 17:47 +, Ian Jackson wrote:
 Svante Signell writes (Re: xpdf removed from testing?):
  On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
   That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
   fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.
  
  OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
  there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
  interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
  it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?
 
 If the existing maintainer doesn't have the effort to stop the package
 being removed from testing then clearly they need help.

Noted, action taken!

 If you provide patches, with a view to xpdf staying in the archive,
 you should probably be prepared for the maintainer to offer you the
 package :-).

I might be interested to continue working on this package, as a start
with the maintainers blessing, see below.

 I would love to help but my I'm out of the special waterproof tuits
 required for swamp-draining.  Good luck.
Thanks!

Yay, xpdf builds again (and prints) :-)

I cleaned out the duplicated code between xpdf and poppler (which is a
continuation of xpdf becoming a PDF rendering library). Some more
cleaning is still needed, to actually remove all irrelevant code (and
update relevant code). Is it possible to create a new code base from my
changes and the many patches?

The patched version of xpdf has been tested with both libpoppler19
(0.18.4-10) and libpoppler37 (0.22.5-3). libfontconfig version is
2.11.0-2.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389820167.9619.36.ca...@g3620.my.own.domain



Re: mupdf (Was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-14 Thread Dominik George
  I would love to have it *real* fullscreen
since

   f  Toggles fullscreen mode.

... but the rendered PDF remains in a small section in the middle of
the
window.  Not sure whether this is a bug or a feature - but for
presentations ist seems I need to stick to evince.

Or you continue reading the docs until you have reached the end.

f sets the window to.fullscreen mode.

H (Shift-H, mind you) fits the document to the screen height.

I always use mupdf for presentations and it works just great!

-nik


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/9ea74abe-3781-4072-8851-5fc1a57d4...@email.android.com



Re: mupdf (Was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-14 Thread Andreas Tille
On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 09:13:36AM +0100, Dominik George wrote:
   I would love to have it *real* fullscreen
 since
 
f  Toggles fullscreen mode.
 
 ... but the rendered PDF remains in a small section in the middle of
 the
 window.  Not sure whether this is a bug or a feature - but for
 presentations ist seems I need to stick to evince.
 
 Or you continue reading the docs until you have reached the end.
 
 f sets the window to.fullscreen mode.
 
 H (Shift-H, mind you) fits the document to the screen height.

I also read this (I love that short docs) but there is a very thick
remaining gray frame - it seems the scaling is done only by integer
numbers which is for sure quick but the result is not what I want.
 
Kind regards

  Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140114082500.gi25...@an3as.eu



Re: mupdf (Was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-14 Thread Dominik George
I also read this (I love that short docs) but there is a very thick
remaining gray frame - it seems the scaling is done only by integer
numbers which is for sure quick but the result is not what I want.

Hmm. I cannot reproduce that, sorry!

-nik 


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/06747119-396f-4487-b492-48256e618...@email.android.com



Re: mupdf (Was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-14 Thread Andrei POPESCU
On Ma, 14 ian 14, 08:50:29, Andreas Tille wrote:
 window.  Not sure whether this is a bug or a feature - but for
 presentations ist seems I need to stick to evince.

Check out pdf-presenter-console or zathura (if you you don't mind the
vim-style interface).

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic
http://nuvreauspam.ro/gpg-transition.txt


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Svante Signell
Hi,

Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very
much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream?

Maybe this question should go to debian-release instead?


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389631101.20551.60.ca...@s1499.it.kth.se



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Marco d'Itri
On Jan 13, Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote:

 Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very
 much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream?
Do you need more reasons?

 Maybe this question should go to debian-release instead?
Maybe you should send patches instead. 

-- 
ciao,
Marco


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
On 01/13/2014 05:38 PM, Svante Signell wrote:
 Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very
 much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream?

The 7 RC bugs are the exact reason:

 http://packages.qa.debian.org/x/xpdf/news/20131208T163914Z.html

This is part of Debian's new scheme to keep an always releasable
testing. And if no one can be bothered to fix these bugs, the
package will automatically removed from testing.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52d419ba.9010...@physik.fu-berlin.de



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Neil Williams
On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100
Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,
 
 Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear.

No, it will be removed from testing. That means that new users won't
have it available but anyone who already has it installed is welcome
to it, with all it's bugs. apt does not remove it from installed
systems just because it is no longer downloadable, at least until it
gets in the way of other upgrades or you actively seek out orphaned /
obsolete packages. If it is removed from testing due to being
unsuitable for release (in this case, seven times over), then it
clearly is obsolete.

 I like that program very
 much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead
 upstream?

That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.

-- 


Neil Williams
=
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature


Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Svante Signell
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
 On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100
 Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote:

  I like that program very
  much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead
  upstream?
 
 That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
 fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.

OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389633561.20551.66.ca...@s1499.it.kth.se



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Andreas Tille
Hi Svante,

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 06:19:21PM +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
 On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
  On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100
  Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   I like that program very
   much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead
   upstream?
  
  That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
  fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.
 
 OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
 there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
 interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
 it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?

The option of the maintainer increases drastically if one of 1000 users
would care for one bug and provides a patch.  May be you show your
evident interest by simply beeing one of such group of 1000 users? 

Kind regards

 Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140113172604.gp7...@an3as.eu



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Ian Jackson
Svante Signell writes (Re: xpdf removed from testing?):
 On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
  That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
  fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.
 
 OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
 there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
 interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
 it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?

If the existing maintainer doesn't have the effort to stop the package
being removed from testing then clearly they need help.

If you provide patches, with a view to xpdf staying in the archive,
you should probably be prepared for the maintainer to offer you the
package :-).

I would love to help but my I'm out of the special waterproof tuits
required for swamp-draining.  Good luck.

Ian.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/21204.9893.216127.986...@chiark.greenend.org.uk



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Kevin Chadwick
previously on this list Svante Signell contributed:

 Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very
 much.

I like it too but it's save dialog is pretty terrible. Have you checked
out mupdf. No save but similar otherwise.

p.s. qpdfview is shaping up and remembers tabs too.

-- 
___

'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)

In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd
___


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/96511.59881...@smtp101.mail.ir2.yahoo.com



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Neil Williams
On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:19:21 +0100
Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 16:59 +, Neil Williams wrote:
  On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:38:21 +0100
  Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   I like that program very
   much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead
   upstream?
  
  That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably
  makes fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it
  from testing.
 
 OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
 there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
 interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or
 is it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?

As a maintainer (upstream  Debian) for one package using PDF
documents, I see all PDF tools as vulnerable to security problems and
all have relatively long lists of dependencies which keep moving ahead.

A dead upstream is a indication of several things:

0: The upstream maintainers have lost the will to fight the tide of bugs

1: The Debian maintainer does not have the time / desire to take on the
upstream role on top of everything else

2: patches just for Debian are not going to get testing elsewhere and
patches from elsewhere will be hard to integrate (that is upstream's
job)

3: even if some RC bugs are fixed, the lack of upstream makes it hard
to see how future ones will get fixed.

4: the code probably hides some nasty, ugly assumptions and hacks which
is why upstream gave up on it in the first place

So, yes. 9 times out of 10 all of this will be a complete waste of
effort for everyone concerned, most of all for the users wanting bugs
fixed.

Been there, done that - all that happened was that I kept a broken
package hobbling along for another two stable releases, overall code
quality falling with every release, until I removed it from Debian
entirely.

If my package had even a few of the RC bugs affecting xpdf, I would
have removed it from unstable long, long ago, let alone just testing.

Remove it now. If a *team* magically appears, then maybe code quality
could improve. A single person doing the upstream role will rarely have
enough time to actually improve code quality.

As a user who seems to care about the package, don't you actually want
to use a package where someone would have responded to the bugs? How
would you feel if you had filed one or two of those RC bugs?

-- 


Neil Williams
=
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature


OT: New RC handling policy (was: xpdf removed from testing)

2014-01-13 Thread Martin Eberhard Schauer

 I like that program very
 much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead
 upstream?
 That's 7 entirely sufficient reasons and one problem that arguably makes
 fixing the other seven harder. So 7.5 reasons to remove it from testing.

I just want to say that I like the approach to distinguish between important
and not so important packages and to remove packages with RC bugs without
maintainer action within some reasonable time. I hope that more RC bug 
fixing

will be done before the freeze. IMO Debian has become to big to handle
essential and leaf packages equally.

Martin

user and contributor for five and a half years


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52d424e9.7050...@gmx.de



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Jakub Wilk

* Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com, 2014-01-13, 17:38:
Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very 
much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs,


For very small values of 7. :-)


a dead upstream?


The last xpdf release was in 2011, the previous one in 2007. Upstream 
certainly doesn't subscribe to the “release eary, release early” 
philosophy, but the report of their death might be an exaggeration.


But then, xpdf in Debian is so heavily patched, that it doesn't have 
much to do with the upstream version anyway...


--
Jakub Wilk


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140113182558.ga3...@jwilk.net



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Russ Allbery
Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com writes:

 OK; OK, I understand completely. As a follow-up: according to popcon
 there are about 10 000 installations of that package. Any
 interest/chance that patches will help re-introduce this package, or is
 it just a waste of effort? What is the opinion of the maintainers?

While someone could fix the package, you may want to consider not doing
so.  After running into endless bugs in xpdf, I personally switched to
mupdf for a light-weight PDF reader and found it superior in every respect
except for the fact that it doesn't, so far as I can tell, support
printing.  So I use mupdf to view PDF documents, and on the rare occasion
that I want to print one, I open it in gv (which I find clunkier, but
which generally works fine and prints).

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87fvor4t95@windlord.stanford.edu



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Adam D. Barratt
On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 19:25 +0100, Jakub Wilk wrote:
 * Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com, 2014-01-13, 17:38:
 Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very 
 much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs,
 
 For very small values of 7. :-)

There are seven, but five of them are merged.

Regards,

Adam


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/1389644206.4536.18.ca...@jacala.jungle.funky-badger.org



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Norbert Preining
  Is it true that xpdf is about to disappear. I like that program very
  much. For which reasons, in addition to the 7 RC bugs, a dead upstream?
 Do you need more reasons?

Actually *1* RC bug that was introduced by replacing the proper xpdf
code with linking to poppler - a moving target that never cares for
any other packages. poppler pulls in pthread and that goes boom.

Yes, xpdf works very well. THose people having problem should simple
compile a version from upstream without the pesty Debian changes to
link against poppler, and it will work again.

Norbert


PREINING, Norbert   http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live  Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140113221635.gl24...@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at



Re: xpdf removed from testing?

2014-01-13 Thread Josselin Mouette
Le mardi 14 janvier 2014 à 07:16 +0900, Norbert Preining a écrit : 
 Yes, xpdf works very well. THose people having problem should simple
 compile a version from upstream without the pesty Debian changes to
 link against poppler, and it will work again.

And as a bonus, the PDF exploits will work again, too.

-- 
Josselin Mouette  /\./\
 pouet
 pouet
« Sans puissance, la maîtrise n'est rien. »


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389652259.13485.2.camel@tomoyo



mupdf (Was: xpdf removed from testing?)

2014-01-13 Thread Andreas Tille
Hi Russ,

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 10:43:50AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
 While someone could fix the package, you may want to consider not doing
 so.  After running into endless bugs in xpdf, I personally switched to
 mupdf for a light-weight PDF reader and found it superior in every respect
 except for the fact that it doesn't, so far as I can tell, support
 printing.  So I use mupdf to view PDF documents, and on the rare occasion
 that I want to print one, I open it in gv (which I find clunkier, but
 which generally works fine and prints).

Nice hint, pretty quick.  However, from my perspective who uses LaTeX
beamer frequently it would be great if the promise of the manual

   p  Toggle presentation mode.

would do what I expect it to do.  It seems it just adds some delayed
shading / smoothing effect.  I would love to have it *real* fullscreen
since

   f  Toggles fullscreen mode.

... but the rendered PDF remains in a small section in the middle of the
window.  Not sure whether this is a bug or a feature - but for
presentations ist seems I need to stick to evince.

Kind regards

   Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140114075029.gg25...@an3as.eu