Poppler and xpdf-based PDF viewers fail to render single characters in some PDF documents. Running the applications from the console returns error messages indicating a problem with embedded fonts, specifically "Error: Illegal entry in bfchar block in ToUnicode CMap". This is being tracked by Ubuntu as bug number 252250 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/freetype/+bug/252250). A fix was committed to Freetype, with the earliest checkout working is timestamp 2008-10-03. Unfortunately, my knowledge of fonts is insufficient to tell which patch or sequence of patches resolves the problem. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Acquire buggy document (for example, http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG/v5748btpy84o0) 2. View in any Poppler/xpdf based viewer using Freetype2 before CVS date 2008-10-03 Actual Results: Some capital A characters are missing. Expected Results: Display with all characters shown.
This was reported to the Freetype maintainer as bug #24430 (https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=24430). The proposed patch fixes the issue. I'm attaching it here for consideration.
Created attachment 176797 [details, diff] Patch to Freetype-2 to resolve this bug.
In CVS: +*freetype-2.3.7-r1 (01 Jan 2009) + + 01 Jan 2009; Peter Alfredsen <loki_val@gentoo.org> + +files/freetype-2.3.7-b.g.o-247104.patch, + +files/freetype-2.3.7-b.g.o-253029.patch, + +files/freetype-2.3.7-fix-incorrect-scaling.patch, + +files/freetype-2.3.7-no-segfault-on-load_mac_face.patch, + +freetype-2.3.7-r1.ebuild: + Fix bug 247104, segfault in cffparse.c:361, bug 253029, missing letters in + certain fonts, thanks to Andreas Turriff for the patch-pointer. Also + import patches for alien bugs: http://bugs.debian.org/487101, segfault + when building certain fonts and + http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?23973 , incorrect scaling of + certain fonts. +
