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 > [email protected] > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/poppler > _______________________________________________ poppler mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/poppler
