The Papers MIR appears to be nearly ready for approval so I'm removing the draft status here
** Description changed: - This is a draft to provide the Ubuntu Release Team with early notice of - a likely Feature Freeze Exception for Ubuntu 25.04. - Impact ====== The Ubuntu Desktop Team would like to switch the default standalone PDF viewer app from Evince to Papers. Papers was forked from Evince and appears to be significantly better maintained than Evince currently. GNOME is expected to switch their default app for GNOME 49 later this year. The Ubuntu Desktop team does not see a need to wait until then. This was pre-announced at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu- desktop-25-04-part-1-the-plucky-roadmap/49621 and reaffirmed at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-25-04-mid-cycle-roadmap/55690 Why This Wasn't Done Sooner ========================== The required MIR was filed before Ubuntu 25.04 Feature Freeze but it also needed a review by the Ubuntu Security Team. https://launchpad.net/bugs/2097727 Papers didn't arrive in Ubuntu universe until February 2 because the Debian NEW review took a couple months. Affected Packages ================= The ubuntu-desktop metapackages (from ubuntu-meta) will have the simple swap. - gtk4, gtk+3.0 and possibly gtk+2.0 will need a change to switch their - default PDF viewer for the Print Preview feature (as seen in gnome-text- - editor and gedit) from evince to papers. TODO: provide a diff of this - change + xdg-desktop-portal-gnome needs a patch (probably applied in Ubuntu before accepted upstream) so that the Print Preview feature in gtk4 apps and portaled apps continues to work. Currently, evince's previewer is hard-coded. + https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome/-/merge_requests/216 + + A similar change is needed for gtk+3.0 but has not been prepared yet. + (Both libreoffice and gedit bundle their own print previewers but there + are many other gtk3 apps that support printing). Importantly, we need + gtk+3.0 to support both papers or evince depending on which is installed + because Ubuntu Cinnamon includes evince but not Papers. (I think this + feature is actually broken for many other Ubuntu Desktop Flavors which + ship the evince fork named atril while gtk+3.0 is hard-coded to only use + evince.) + + Other Info + ========== + I was told recently that RHEL 10 (currently in Beta) has also made the switch. Fedora is considering the switch for their 42 release (expected to be released soon after Ubuntu 25.04) so there is cross-distro interest in switching even before GNOME officially switches. + + The Ubuntu Desktop Team might patch the .desktop file for Papers to + display as "Document Viewer" since that is what is intended to happen + once GNOME officially switches. Papers will be part of Ubuntu's language + packs so there should not be a translation issue with this change. + Ubuntu 25.04 has not reached User Interface Freeze yet so this change is + not part of this freeze exception request. ** Summary changed: - [draft] FFe: install papers instead of evince in Ubuntu Desktop by default + FFe: install papers instead of evince in Ubuntu Desktop by default -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2099693 Title: FFe: install papers instead of evince in Ubuntu Desktop by default To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/papers/+bug/2099693/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
