Re: ggv/gpdf and evince

[Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it>]

Il giorno gio, 09/06/2005 alle 13.08 -0400, Luis Villa ha scritto:
> I think there seems to be a very strong consensus that ggv/gpdf should
> be replaced by evince in 2.12. Does anyone object to me going ahead
> and removing them from the jhbuild moduleset and adding evince?

Wait. There are some troubles with poppler+cairo on head :-(

I didn't yet report them, 'cause I'm still performing some tests and
collecting info on not well behaving PDF files, but it seems there is a
performance regression in recent CVS builds.

The most critical PDF file is this[1] introduction to signal processing
in Scilab (and maybe all PDFs from the same location): it locks the
poppler benckmark application at page 2 (!!!) and leaves the evince view
empty. There are some slowness with some PDFs[2] from Apple website[3]
too. I _suppose_ it could be a cairo issue, because I remember that all
works fine in pre cairo-0.5.0 days.

BTW it seems that gpdf too has a wrong rendering on [1]: all math
formulas disappear (see i.e. page 16 or 19) and some graphs are simply
wrong (see i.e. page 18): only xpdf (3.00) works fine in this file :-|
And evince+poppler_splash of course.

Moreover it seems that evince suffers for a slow re-rendering on resize
that you can't feel in gpdf. With and without poppler's cairo output.

Please note that I think we should include evince in GNOME, replacing
gpdf and ggv. I'm only saying that maybe is better disable by now
poppler's cairo backend: this will produce sometimes a less sexy
rendering, but it's fast and with no faults.

As attachment there are my records about poppler benchmarks: I'll report
them on poppler bugzilla.

[1] ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Scilab/documentation/pdf/signal.pdf
[2] http://images.apple.com/server/pdfs/Workgroup_Manager_TB_v10.4.pdf
[4] http://www.apple.com/server/resources/

Poppler Benchmarks

Poppler 0.3.2 (cairo 0.5.0)

Document			|Pages	|Size	|Real	|User	|Sys	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PostScript Language 		|772	|3.7MB	|48.38	|21.43	|20.43	|
	Reference Manual	|	|	|	|	|	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Signal Processing with Scilab	|205	|1.3MB	|137.46	|71.07	|57.39	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time Out			|161	|1.3MB	|6.36	|3.81	|1.48	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
101 GNOME things		|90 	|1.8MB	|58.53	|47.36	|1.82	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
OSX Workgroup Manager		|6	|316KB	|1.51	|0.77	|0.24	|


Poppler HEAD (cairo HEAD) on 2005-06-07

Document			|Pages	|Size	|Real	|User	|Sys	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PostScript Language 		|772	|3.7MB	|45.65	|22.66	|19.81	|
	Reference Manual	|	|	|	|	|	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Signal Processing with Scilab	|205	|1.3MB	|*	|*	|*	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time Out			|161	|1.3MB	|6.27	|4.10	|1.49	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
101 GNOME things		|90 	|1.8MB	|58.02	|53.46	|1.80	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
OSX Workgroup Manager		|6	|316KB	|7.84	|7.05	|0.32	|


Poppler HEAD (only Splash) on 2005-06-07

Document			|Pages	|Size	|Real	|User	|Sys	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PostScript Language 		|772	|3.7MB	|66.05	|42.14	|20.01	|
	Reference Manual	|	|	|	|	|	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Signal Processing with Scilab	|205	|1.3MB	|20.11	|10.78	|7.95	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time Out			|161	|1.3MB	|16.70	|14.07	|1.56	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
101 GNOME things		|90 	|1.8MB	|13.10	|11.06	|1.15	|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
OSX Workgroup Manager		|6	|316KB	|1.54	|0.61	|0.23	|


* Still rendering page 2 after about 3 minutes :-((( Killed. top says:
 PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 25   0  225m 190m 7608 R 84.1 76.2   2:59.87 benchmark


------------------------------------------------
Some info and notes about test suite

* PLRM
	PDF version 1.1
	A "complex" document, but "well written": Evince don't suffer rendering pages

* Scilab Signal Processing
	PDF version 1.2
	A lot of math formulas and graphics (LaTeX!!)
	Creator LaTeX with hyperref package
	Producer dvips + Distiller
	GPDF renders it quickly, but fails on formulas
	XPDF 3.00 renders it quickly and right.

* TIME OUT
	PDF version 1.5
	Only simple text and tables.
	Just a full page image on cover and a graph in the middle of the book

* 101 GNOME Things to Know
	PDF version 1.4
	A OOo/SO Impress presentation converted to PDF
	Uses a Sun employes's only font
	A lot of images
	Different font rendering in GPDF: less "bold" fonts

* OSX Workgroup Manager
	PDF version 1.4
	A "strange" document, more graphic oriented then contents oriented.
	Evince feels really slow rendering it,