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E3LDDfrK

Member

Registered: 2019-10-24

Posts: 72

[SOLVED] Evince can't open certain pdf pages but okular etc. can

Okular, chromium, mupdf, etc. can open the page, but not evince and papers. They just show a blank page, and there's a "loading..." text on the page. This is using the latest evince in the repo, evince 1:48.4-1 .

The file in question: https://gofile.io/d/44wLnR

Printing the page on chromium, etc. and opening it on evince didn't work. Still a blank page. 
Trying to do some conversion with `gs` command doesn't seem to create a new working pdf too. 

Googling it, my problem sounds similar to old issues that the package had:
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/-/work_items/1517 "Specific PDF shows no content (only white pages); displayed correctly in Okular"
- https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/ … _items/991 "pdftocairo fails to convert a specific PDF"
- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=233470 "[SOLVED] Evince Document Viewer Renders .pdf Badly"

`pdftocairo` gives error as reported on those links. `qpdf --check` says nothing. 

I tried downgrading a bunch of packages, and using an old `freetype2` package freetype2-2.13.3-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst from the archive worked. But that's not really a solution.

It sounds like the package breaks (for certain "bad" pdf) every few years. The main problem is the error is pretty silent. I just noticed it by accident.

If anyone can tell what's wrong with the pdf, and how to fix it, that would be the best solution I think. I prefer evince compared to other pdf readers.

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Solution: For now, using freetype2-git from AUR is a solution.

Last edited by E3LDDfrK (2026-07-16 17:52:01)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,010

Re: [SOLVED] Evince can't open certain pdf pages but okular etc. can

Does 2.14.2-1 still work (ie. how recent is this regression)?
Maybe some suspicious commit shows up in https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/ … it/log/src

Also did you check freetype2-git (there're couple of patches that look at least adjacent to the one referenced in https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=233470 )

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E3LDDfrK

Member

Registered: 2019-10-24

Posts: 72

Re: [SOLVED] Evince can't open certain pdf pages but okular etc. can

Hi, just checked. Sorry was in a rush so didn't check them 1 by 1, just picked a random old package. 

On the archive, freetype2-2.14.1-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst from 15-Feb-2026 19:37 seems to be the last working version. So 2 versions before the current one. 
But while testing, the last 2 version sometimes show the page. Not sure why. 

Haven't tried the freetype2-git . edit: I tried it. The git version on AUR works. Not an ideal solution though. But I will mark it as [SOLVED].

Last edited by E3LDDfrK (2026-07-16 17:50:25)