Bad rendering of certain pdf files

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

If you could attach a couple of PDFs so the developers could more easily reproduce the problem then that would be helpful.

It is reproducible with certain pdfs. I've attached an old PRL article that renders badly everytime I open it in Evince.

I will upload screenshots of how it appears in Evince and Xpdf in subsequent comments.

This bad rendering has happened on Gutsy and Hardy too as far as I remember. I'm using an Acer Aspire 2930z now but I remember this happened on my old HP Pavilion dv5127ea as well. Which leads me to suspect this is quite broadly experienced!

"Badly rendered" evince pdf

The same pdf rendered neatly in xpdf.

The difference is more pronounced when zoomed in and when you're trying to read equations. I like evince because its fast-loading and I just wish it wouldnt do this with the old PRL pdfs that I have to read frequently.

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

I'm guessing that the attached PDF file must have been scanned from a hard copy without the use of OCR software, and the resulting image converted to PDF.

The output of pdffonts Anyons_Wilczek_1982.pdf (I modified the filename when I saved it) is empty - see attachment.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF the PDF file format was created in 1993, and PDF version 1.3 was created in 1999.

The output of pdfinfo Anyons_Wilczek_1982.pdf is:

Producer: g42pdf.pl 1.0
Tagged: no
Pages: 3
Encrypted: no
Page size: 612 x 792 pts (letter)
File size: 464443 bytes
Optimized: no
PDF version: 1.3

Still occurring on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx alpha 2 updated to the latest poppler 0.12.3-0ubuntu1

This bug was fixed for Lucid in poppler 0.12.4-0ubuntu3, which has since been superseded by poppler 0.12.4-0ubuntu4.

I have tested using the file in comment 3 and can confirm the fix. Marking as fix released. Please reopen this bug if it is not fixed for you on Lucid.

The bug initially seemed to have been fixed since those PRL articles I was trying earlier are rendering perfectly.

However, I can still find pdfs for which Evince doesn't render as perfectly as xpdf or Adobe Reader.

I've attached a screenshot comparing the same pdf rendered in Evince (upper left), Adobe (right) and xpdf (bottom).

What's weird is that if I print the pdf to a pdf file from Evince, the new printed pdf renders perfectly in Evince (as good as it renders in xpdf and Adobe).

I'll attach the pdf in question in the next comment.

Here's the pdf I referred to in my previous comment.

Oh and I suggest downloading the png file and viewing it in 'Normal Size' in say, Eye of Gnome, so that it looks just like it did on my screen. (Otherwise, you probably won't notice the differences. And trust me, the slightly inferior rendering can be quite irritating when reading pages of scanned handwritten notes!)

I can see the difference in the PNG file and can reproduce it with the file in comment #11. However it might be better to open a new bug. When I said in comment #9 "Please reopen this bug if it is not fixed for you on Lucid", I was thinking more of if you were still having trouble with the PRL journal articles such as the one in comment #3. It would probably be easier for anyone working on a possible fix to follow the current problem if it was separated into a new bug.

I've submitted a separate bug report. (Bug #584222)