[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#524730: problem with text in pdf files created with cups-pdf

[Volker Behr]

Just some information from upstream:
I just checked CUPS-PDF 2.5.0 using the CUPS-PDF.ppd with two tests:
a) printing a textfile directly to a PDF
   (lp -d CUPS-PDF .bashrc) 
b) converting a textfile with a2ps to PS and then printing it to PDF
   (a2ps .bashrc -o - | lp -d CUPS-PDF)

In either case the text was fully intact and I could copy and paste
arbitraty sections out of it and do a text-search on it.

So this might be an issue of the application creating the the original
document (maybe this application already creates a PS file with text
being converted to graphics). If that is the case, CUPS-PDF works as
designed since it never got any text to convert.

BEWARE: the above mentioned tests were NOT done on a Debian system! So
you should try to reproduce them.

Regards,
Volker

-- 

Dr. rer. nat. Volker Christian Behr
Experimentelle Physik V (Biophysik), Physikalisches Institut
Universitaet Wuerzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Wuerzburg, Germany

Office: Room F-069a
+49-931-31-85766 (phone)
+49-931-888-5851 (fax)

On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 15:40 +0200, Anders Lagerås wrote:
> Package: cups-pdf
> Version: 2.5.0-1
> Severity: important
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> If CUPS-PDF.ppd is used as recommended does not the pdf files created contain
> text, instead is everthing seems to be handled as graphics, resulting in large
> non searchable pdf files.
> 
> - -- System Information:
> Debian Release: squeeze/sid
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
> 
> Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
> Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=sv_SE (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
> 
> Versions of packages cups-pdf depends on:
> ii  cups                         1.3.10-1    Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
> ii  cups-client                  1.3.10-1    Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
> ii  ghostscript                  8.64~dfsg-1 The GPL Ghostscript PostScript/PDF
> ii  libc6                        2.9-7       GNU C Library: Shared libraries
> ii  libpaper-utils               1.1.23+nmu1 library for handling paper charact
> 
> cups-pdf recommends no packages.
> 
> Versions of packages cups-pdf suggests:
> pn  system-config-printer-gnome | <none>     (no description available)
> 
> - -- no debconf information
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
> 
> iEYEARECAAYFAknrKdwACgkQw5UvgfnzqGq0NgCePLg2Fp8P4kSt64wJ+hyDNQQv
> MZcAnRtqxI98Ieyg77ng6hpsRUNVhUtu
> =W7Ed
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----