[poppler] A question about xpdf

[suzuki toshiya]

Excuse me, I think the name of "xpdf" is owned by Glyph & Cog,
not by poppler project (poppler is not owned by Glyph & Cog).
I think the poppler developers would have no problem with
the development of the xpdf-compatible applications using poppler,
but, the poppler developers could not comment with the name
of "xpdf".

Anyway, removal of xpdf package from Debian is a pity, I
sympathize. I feel most of post-xpdf PDF viewers are slightly
too heavy because of the binding with rich UI toolkits.

Is it impossible for Debian(-based distributions) to have
xpdf-compatible application with different name, and making
a symlink from it (whose name is not xpdf) to /usr/bin/xpdf ?

Regards,
mpsuzuki

On 01/17/2014 02:38 AM, Svante Signell wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm a user of xpdf, which I like a lot for viewing and printing PDF
> documents. The latest release of xpdf was 3.0.3 August 15 2011 (by Glyph
> & Cog, LLC). Recently the latest patched version in GNU/Debian is having
> serious bugs and is removed from testing, i.e. it will no longer be part
> of Jessie when it is released. In my opinion it is a pity that it
> disappears, even if other PDF viewers are available. The main reason for
> not working any longer is that the PDF rendering backend conflicts with
> libpoppler, which is currently used also for xpdf. The problem is
> between some classes and functions in xpdf and poppler.
> 
> Looking at the webpage for poppler, the description makes this conflict
> clear: "Poppler is a PDF rendering library based on the xpdf-3.0 code
> base." So the classes in poppler are newer versions of parts of the xpdf
> code, converted to a library. Finding the problems of a disappearing
> xpdf annoying (Debian popcon shows 10 000 installations) I managed to
> clear out conflicting and redundant code (some work still needed) to
> make it run again. Since the changes were so large, Debian people did
> not want to carry this kind of patches, since Debian Maintainers
> normally package upstream source code, forward patches upstream, and
> carry Debian-specific patches.
> 
> Their recommendation was to contact you, in case I take over the
> responsibility for xpdf as a new (forked) upstream. My question is if
> you allow me to reuse the name xpdf for a stripped-off version using
> poppler as backend, otherwise another name has to be chosen. Of course,
> if xpdf could again be a package with poppler (Glyph & Cog, LLC)?) as
> upstream would be the best solution. In that case I will gladly submit
> my patches here.
> 
> Best regards,
> Svante Signell
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> poppler mailing list
> poppler at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/poppler
>