Your message dated Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:20:17 +0000
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Bug#1098707: fixed in meta-gnome3 1:49+1
has caused the Debian Bug report #1098707,
regarding gnome-core: Switch from evince to papers
to be marked as done.
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1098707: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1098707
Debian Bug Tracking System
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: gnome-core
Version: 1:47+6
X-Debbugs-CC: [email protected]
I propose that we switch gnome-core to depend on papers instead of
evince for Debian Trixie.
Background
---------------
Papers had its first release in May 2024. Papers was forked from
Evince after the Papers developers were frustrated that they were
unable to get their merge requests into Evince, particularly a switch
from gtk3 to gtk4 and a partial rewrite in Rust.
Since then, Evince has yet to switch to gtk4 even in its development
branch (despite merge requests being available). Evince has had much
less development than Papers: in number of contributors, number of
commits, and number of new features. My strongest argument to switch
is that Papers is better maintained.
Brief Feature Comparison
--------
- Papers generally has the same features as Evince.
- Papers does not support the DVI, PostScript or XPS formats. You can
use imagemagick to convert those documents to PDF.
- Papers does not have bookmarks support which is different from table
of contents links for PDFs which have those. The Notes feature is
similar to bookmarks.
- Papers has improved Night Mode and has added digital signature
verification. The UI is a bit confusing but you can also use Papers to
sign PDFs if you have certificates such as those present in Spain's
national ID cards.
Status in GNOME
-------
I believe it is likely but not certain that GNOME 49 will switch from
Evince to Papers. The biggest blocker on GNOME's side is screen reader
support. I don't think screen reader support will be working for GNOME
48 but it is being worked on. [1] [2]
Status in Ubuntu
-----
Ubuntu has announced they will try to switch from Evince to Papers for
Ubuntu 25.04. It is currently blocked on a review by the Ubuntu
Security Team. [3]
Screen Reader
------
My opinion is that Evince's Screen Reader support is bad enough that I
don't think it is actually used. Firefox can open and read PDFs very
well.
I emailed the Debian accessibility list about switching to Papers. Sam
Hartman replied confirming that he has been using Firefox for PDFs,
that Evince's screen reader support isn't as bad as I feared (but he
still had to be told that it existed), and that he wouldn't hugely
mind if we switched. [4]
How to Switch
--------
It's a simple swap in gnome-core. Swapping the Print Preview feature
is more work. evince-previewer is hardcoded in several places. I think
the least disruptive way to handle this (least disruptive to other
desktop environments etc) is to patch libraries to use
papers-previewer by default and fall back to evince-previewer.
We need to patch
- gtk+3.0 (mousepad is a good test app)
- gtk4 (Have to use GDK_DEBUG=no-portals then gnome-text-editor or
gtk4-demo's Printing demo works)
- xdg-desktop-portal-gnome (GTK4 uses portals by default, so use
gnome-text-editor)
Optional
- gtk+2.0 (xournal could be a test app)
- xdg-desktop-portal-gtk (This is more about enablement for desktops
other than GNOME. So maybe test with Cinnamon and gnome-text-editor)
Other
gedit bundles its own print preview feature so don't use that for
testing these changes
References
--------
[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/AppOrganization/-/issues/24
[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Incubator/papers/-/issues/46
[3] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-25-04-mid-cycle-roadmap/55690
[4] https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/2025/02/msg00019.html
Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Source: meta-gnome3
Source-Version: 1:49+1
Done: Jeremy Bícha <[email protected]>
We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
meta-gnome3, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.
A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.
Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed. If you
have further comments please address them to [email protected],
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.
Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Jeremy Bícha <[email protected]> (supplier of updated meta-gnome3 package)
(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing [email protected])
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Format: 1.8
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2025 19:06:19 +0200
Source: meta-gnome3
Built-For-Profiles: noudeb
Architecture: source
Version: 1:49+1
Distribution: experimental
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers
<[email protected]>
Changed-By: Jeremy Bícha <[email protected]>
Closes: 1091863 1098707
Changes:
meta-gnome3 (1:49+1) experimental; urgency=medium
.
[ Jeremy Bícha ]
* gnome-core: Follow GNOME and switch from evince to papers
(Closes: #1098707) and from totem to showtime
* gnome-core: Add Depends: totem-video-thumbnailer
* gnome: remove shotwell since loupe now has basic image editing
* Bump Standards Version to 4.7.2
.
[ Simon McVittie ]
* gnome: Demote gnome-music from Recommends to Suggests.
GNOME Music is still part of the Core Apps module (at least for now),
but it isn't clear that it's desirable to install it by default when
a Debian GNOME desktop is installed. By demoting it to Suggests,
it will remain installed on upgraded systems but will not be part
of new installations.
(Closes: #1091863)
* d/control: Sort meta-gnome-core-apps in the same order as upstream
* d/control: Note divergences from upstream meta-gnome-core-apps,
meta-gnome-core-shell modulesets.
This makes it clearer which divergences are accidental (us not
keeping up with upstream changes) and which are intentional.
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