Questions[poppler](ubuntu)

I have seen the first answer to How to install poppler 0.73 on ubuntu 18.04 which basically consists of the following steps:

Compile and install Poppler 0.73 with checkinstall to the /usr/local:

sudo apt-get install libopenjp2-7-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev cmake checkinstall
sudo apt-get build-dep libpoppler-cpp-dev

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://poppler.freedesktop.org/poppler-0.73.0.tar.xz
tar -xf poppler-0.73.0.tar.xz
cd poppler-0.73.0

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
sudo checkinstall make install

Define the environment variable R_LD_LIBRARY_PATH to inform R about the Poppler libraries in /usr/local/lib:

echo "export R_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=\$R_LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib" >> .bashrc

Compile the pdftools R-package inside R-shell:

install.packages("pdftools")

Test it from R-shell with any pdf-file

> pdftools::pdf_data(pdf="/usr/share/cups/data/default.pdf")
[1]]
[1] width  height x      y      space  text  
<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

I wanted to know:

• would the answer also apply to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS? - I tried it, and it worked. However I realised later this is not be the best solution (see answers below).
• would it also apply to any more recent version of poppler? - didn't try, as I didn't want to mess up my working setup with version 0.73.

Here is the output of dpkg -l | grep -i poppler after performing the above install (this is useful to determine how to uninstall, see below):

# dpkg -l | grep -i poppler
ii  build                                20200518-1                         amd64        poppler-0.73.0
ii  poppler-data                         0.4.9-2                            all          encoding data for the poppler PDF rendering library
#

I'm trying to install InkScape on Ubuntu 19.04 from Discover (KDE plasma store), but it shows error:

Dependencies resolution failed

I tried installing it from PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:inkscape.dev/stable
sudo apt install inkscape -y

but it still shows dependencies unmet. This package or dependency is unmet.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
inkscape : Depends: libpoppler82 (>= 0.71.0) but it is not installable
            Recommends: python-uniconvertor but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

How to install it, I can't find any solution. Any help will be appreciated.

This is an old bug, it seems to be not Evince's own fault but the bug is from Poppler. The specific cause of the bug has been identified (it's the calculation of some coordinates) but as of 2019 it is still not fixed in Ubuntu.

This is an example: I tried to highlight the second sentence of the first paragraph, but this is what I get:

That means all the users of Ubuntu cannot highlight PDF texts using Evince --- this is such a basic function.

Is there any way to update Poppler to the correct version such that Evince works?

Please do not mark this as a duplicate question UNLESS one can provide a specific way to upgrade Poppler and resolve this problem.

I am running 18.04 and trying to use version 2.1 of the R package pdftools. Some functionality requires poppler >= 0.73. (A poppler version requirement is documented in ?pdftools::pdf_data.)

I obtained poppler-0.73.0.tar.xz and poppler-data-0.4.9.tar.gz from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/. I extracted, followed the INSTALL instructions, and all seemed to work. I can verify that /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpoppler.so points to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpoppler.so.73. I'm not sure what else to look for or whether update-alternatives would be helpful.

In R, when I run pdftools::pdf_data this happens:

> pdf_data(fn)
Error in poppler_pdf_data(loadfile(pdf), opw, upw) : 
  pdf_data() requires poppler >= 0.73. You have 0.62.0

Other functions in pdftools work, but pdf_data is documented to required poppler >= 0.73. I'm wondering what else I need to do to have 0.73 recognized.

EDIT: Following helpful suggestions at Installing poppler-0.62.0 on ubuntu 16.04, I ran apt-cache policy poppler-0.73 and got:

poppler-0.73:
  Installed: 20190125-0.73
  Candidate: 20190125-0.73
  Version table:
 *** 20190125-0.73 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

This seems to suggest that 0.73 is installed.

The output of apt-cache policy r-base-core is

r-base-core:
  Installed: 3.5.2-1bionic
  Candidate: 3.5.2-1bionic
  Version table:
 *** 3.5.2-1bionic 500
        500 https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/ Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.5.1-2bionic 500
        500 https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/ Packages
     3.5.1-1bionic 500
        500 https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/ Packages
     3.5.0-1bionic 500
        500 https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran35/ Packages
     3.4.4-1ubuntu1 500
        500 http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 and filling out the SS-5 Social Security Administration form. However, some of the letters are wrongly positioned.

Evince 3.28.2-1:

Okular 1.3.3 (Ubuntu version 4:17.12.3-0ubuntu1):

xpdf 3.04-7:

mudpdf 1.12.0:

The built-in PDF reader for Firefox 59.0.2:

The built-in PDF reader for Chromium 65.0.3325.181:

Here is the output of pdffonts:

$ pdffonts ss-5.pdf
name                                 type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
IHPIKC+ArialMT                       CID TrueType      Identity-H       yes yes yes    824  0
ArialMT                              TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no     826  0
Arial-BoldMT                         TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no     828  0
CourierStd                           Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no     145  0
Helvetica                            Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no     197  0
MyriadPro-Regular                    Type 1            WinAnsi          no  no  no     198  0
ZapfDingbats                         Type 1            ZapfDingbats     no  no  no     199  0

I have already installed the ttf-mscorefonts-installer and poppler-data packages.

Here are my questions:

• Can I change the font used for filling in the cells of the form?

  It seems like Evince and xpdf are using a variable-width font when they should be using a monospaced font, and maybe this is causing the positioning problem.

• If I were to file a bug report, should I file it as a poppler issue, a fontconfig issue, or somewhere else?

Update: bug reports:

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fontconfig/+bug/1824260

• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/1127

• https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/issues/753

Edit: The workaround from @xiota is perfectly functional. However, this is still a bug in poppler, because when the PDF viewer substitutes a different font due to the original not being embedded, the spacing in the XFA form should match the substituted font, not the original font. There is a pull request to fix this that is currently in progress. Poppler developer Tobias Deiminger (@haxtibal) described the approach in a different bug report:

The strategy there is, if a font is not embedded, gather and use metrics from the actual substitute font instead of metrics from PDF font descriptor or hardcoded ones.