xpdf cant find paper defn nor fonts

[davidh@…]

I did a remove of macports, followed by a install of 1.9.1-10.5.

The following port commands were issued:

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install quartz-wm
sudo port install xpdf

I then opened an x11 xterm window and ran the following:

bash-3.2$ which xpdf
/opt/local/bin/xpdf
bash-3.2$ xpdf
Error: No paper information available - using defaults
Error: No display font for 'Courier'
Error: No display font for 'Courier-Bold'
Error: No display font for 'Courier-BoldOblique'
Error: No display font for 'Courier-Oblique'
Error: No display font for 'Helvetica'
Error: No display font for 'Helvetica-Bold'
Error: No display font for 'Helvetica-BoldOblique'
Error: No display font for 'Helvetica-Oblique'
Error: No display font for 'Symbol'
Error: No display font for 'Times-Bold'
Error: No display font for 'Times-BoldItalic'
Error: No display font for 'Times-Italic'
Error: No display font for 'Times-Roman'
Error: No display font for 'ZapfDingbats'

Is this an x11 configuration error? What have I forgotten?

[nerdling (Jeremy Lavergne)]

Please remember to preview your formatting prior to submitting a ticket; also please be sure to include the maintainer.

[someuser12]

You can get rid of the Error: No display font for [...] errors by editing the /opt/local/etc/xpdfrc file and uncommenting the lines that start with displayFontT1 .

It seems that some other distributions of xpdf (eg. Debian's) do this automatically.

[someuser12]

Cc Me!

[someuser12]

Replying to macosx12345@…:

You can get rid of the Error: No display font for [...] errors by editing the /opt/local/etc/xpdfrc file and uncommenting the lines that start with displayFontT1 .

Well, this is not very useful here (sorry), as the default xpdfrc file provided with xpdf does not match the fonts that come with today's MacPorts' version of ghostscript (maybe it used in the past).

Instead, I suggest using the fonts that the port urw-fonts provides. I attached a patch proposal to xpdf's portfile that removes the run-depency to ghostscript, adds a run-dependency to urw-fonts and lets xpdf use the fronts from urw-fonts by default.

I successfully tested it on an Intel iMac running Mac OS X 10.6.4 with MacPorts 1.9.1. When opening a PDF document that uses, say, the Times-Roman font, I no longer see empty pages but the actual characters.

(This does not solve the paper definition issue.)

[someuser12]

Update proposal to the Portfile of xpdf to let xpdf use the fonts from urw-fonts by default

[gale@…]

Cc Me!

[gale@…]

Replying to macosx12345@…:

...I suggest using the fonts that the port urw-fonts provides. I attached a patch proposal to xpdf's portfile that removes the run-depency to ghostscript, adds a run-dependency to urw-fonts and lets xpdf use the fronts from urw-fonts by default.

I vote for this patch. That is a much lighter dependency, and it's all we need.

(This does not solve the paper definition issue.)

The current version of xpdf requires the PAPERSIZE environment variable to be set at runtime. Setting it stops that error message.

The value of the environment variable is used as the default, but it is overridden if either the -paper option is specified on the command line or if psPaperSize is specified in xpdfrc.

[ghosthound]

Replying to gale@…:

Replying to macosx12345@…:

...I suggest using the fonts that the port urw-fonts provides. I attached a patch proposal to xpdf's portfile that removes the run-depency to ghostscript, adds a run-dependency to urw-fonts and lets xpdf use the fronts from urw-fonts by default.

I vote for this patch. That is a much lighter dependency, and it's all we need.

I like the idea. The part I don't like is that urw-fonts is no longer present at the source URL in the urw-fonts Portfile. I'd rather have it depend on a set of fonts that's still being distributed, if anyone knows of such a thing (and if we already have a port for it), please append to this ticket.

[someuser12]

Unfortunately there are available sets of fonts that would suit the need but it seems they have no port yet:

• the Ghostscript fonts, available e.g. at ​http://sourceforge.net/projects/gs-fonts/files/gs-fonts/8.11 (base 35%2C GPL)/ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz,
• the (non cyrillized) URW fonts, available e.g. at ​http://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/fonts/urw-fonts.tar.gz .

Why could we not suggest the creation of a port for the Ghostscript fonts?

By the way, probably should we file a bug report and/or cc the maintainer of the urw-fonts ports.

[ghosthound]

No longer maintainer

[pedzsan@…]

Sorry for the newbie type question but... is there a work around for this? I installed xpdf fine but I have no fonts. I do have fonts like /usr/local/share/ghostscript/9.07/Resource/Font/plss9.pfb but the xpdfrc file has names like n021003l.pfb which I don't have. So I don't know which font that I have would match up with Courier, etc.

[geek@…]

I agree urw-fonts should be used by default because the Ghostscript fonts appear to have changed format.

This works:

(1) sudo port install urw-fonts

(2) edit /opt/local/etc/xpdfrc

(3) For each displayFontT1 line:

• uncomment it
• substitute font path from

/opt/local/share/ghostscript/fonts

• to

/opt/local/share/fonts/urw-fonts

[someuser12]

Update proposal to the Portfile of xpdf to let xpdf use the fonts from urw-fonts by default

[someuser12]

I updated the patch to the portfile of xpdf which I suggested some time ago to the current version of the xpdf port.

I understand the argument of the former maintainer that "urw-fonts is no longer present at the source URL in the urw-fonts Portfile". However I notice that the ports ImageMagick and graphviz both already rely on the urw-fonts port.

[someuser12]

In 1505aec2fc08e2d08066f854ff594f3aa63cb273/macports-ports (master):

xpdf: replacing ghostcript fonts with urw-fonts

See: #26057