Available languages : Italiano,

Introduction

Evince is the default application in Ubuntu for opening .pdf, .ps, .djvu, and other supported files as outlined by the project.

Not a bug

The following specific cases are not bugs to report:

Evince can't display dvi files

Evince uses texlive to render .dvi files. If you cannot open a .dvi file (error message "Unable to open document. DVI document has incorrect format"), install the texlive package and try again. (There's bug report #42410 about correcting this error message).

Evince can't display CJK fonts

CJK stands for Chinese-Japanese-Korean. A pdf that includes such text but lacks the embedded fonts will not render correctly unless you install the package poppler-data.

Debugging procedure

In all reports, please ensure you attach an uncompressed/untarred document that the issue is reproducible with.

Crash

If Evince crashes in the latest development release of Ubuntu, please gather a backtrace with all debugging symbols installed, as upstream may not reproduce the issue:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dbg libcroco3-dbgsym librsvg2-dbg libogg-dbg libvorbis0a-dbgsym libltdl7-dbgsym libtdb1-dbg libvorbis-dbg libcanberra0-dbg libcanberra-gtk3-0-dbg libcanberra-gtk3-module-dbg gtk3-engines-unico-dbgsym dconf-gsettings-backend-dbgsym gvfs-libs-dbgsym gvfs-dbg libunity-gtk3-parser0-dbgsym unity-gtk3-module-dbgsym overlay-scrollbar-gtk3-dbgsym libgraphite2-3-dbg libframe6-dbgsym libgrail6-dbgsym libxdmcp6-dbg libxau6-dbg libdatrie1-dbgsym libgcc1-dbg libexpat1-dbgsym libgpg-error0-dbgsym libgeis1-dbgsym libffi6-dbg libselinux1-dbgsym libxcb1-dbg libpng12-0-dbgsym libfreetype6-dbgsym libxext6-dbg libmirclient8-dbgsym libxkbcommon0-dbgsym libwayland-client0-dbg libwayland-cursor0-dbg libwayland-server0-dbg libxdamage1-dbg libxcomposite1-dbg libxcursor1-dbg libxrandr2-dbg libxinerama1-dbg libfontconfig1-dbg libatk-bridge2.0-0-dbg lixfixes3-dbg libxi6-dbg libx11-6-dbg libgcrypt11-dbg zlib1g-dbg libglib2.0-0-dbg libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0-dbg libcairo2-dbg libatk1.0-dbg libpango1.0-0-dbg libgtk-3-0-dbg libgnome-desktop-3-10-dbgsym libsecret-1-0-dbgsym libgcrypt20-dbg libxcb-shm0-dbg libxcb-render0-dbg libpcre3-dbg libatspi2.0-0-dbg libharfbuzz0b-dbgsym libmircommon3-dbgsym libmirprotobuf0-dbgsym libboost1.55-dbg libstdc++6-4.9-dbg liblcms2-dbg libtiff5-dbgsym libjpeg-turbo8-dbg libjbig0-dbgsym libxrender1-dbg libprotobuf9-dbgsym poppler-dbg liblzma5-dbgsym

Rendering issues

Once you have the document and have confirmed it doesn't render as it's supposed to in Evince, you have to find the correct package for this bug. Evince uses:

• libpoppler for rendering pdf files

• libspectre for rendering postscript files

• libpango, libfreetype and fontconfig for fonts choosing and rendering

• libcairo for 2D vector graphics

Try opening it with different viewers to try and isolate the problem:

• PDF

  • Firefox's built-in PDF Viewer - package firefox

  • Okular - package okular

  • Xpdf - package xpdf

  • Adobe Reader

    • All releases - Install the Windows version of Adobe Reader via the latest WINE.

    • In Precise only - package acroread

  • ePdfView - package epdfview in Precise only

  • Chromium's built-in PDF Viewer - package chromium-browser

• PostScript (.ps)

  • gv - package ghostscript

• .djvu

  • djview4 - package djview4

  • xdvi - packge texlive-binaries

When pdf files don't include the embedded fonts used in the document, then if Ubuntu doesn't have the specific font installed, it will search for the nearest equivalent, using fc-match <font>.

It might also be helpful to use the pdfinfo and pdffonts utils (included in the poppler-utils package).

Printing problems

It is best to file printing problems following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems first. If it turns out to be a bug in Evince, it may be reassigned.

Triage responses

No document attached:

Thank you for taking the time to report this and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please attach an example document that demonstrates this issue? 

Reporting bugs upstream

Once the report has been marked Triaged, then one would want to next gather the required information necessary to forward to the appropriate upstream tracker. This includes the version Evince, poppler, and cairo via a terminal:

apt-cache policy evince libcairo2 libpoppler[0-9] 

As well, if reporting an Evince crash, one may post the backtrace as a comment, and bugzilla will wrap it up into a button to expand out.

• Evince: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=evince

• Poppler: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/query.cgi

Backporting Fixes

Bug fixes are reviewed for backporting to all supported Ubuntu releases following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates.

CategoryDebugging