Ubuntu
poppler package

Punctuation, Characters disappear upon highlighting.

Bug #37283 reported by Carthik Sharma
54
This bug affects 7 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Poppler
Invalid
Low
poppler (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs

Bug Description

In pdf files opened using evince, selecting text makes some punctuation disappear. This includes

a) commas (,) that occur immediately after text in italics.
b) Letters that occur immediately after an emdash (A long "-" ).

Also, when highlighting text using the mouse, sometimes highlights the adjacent column (sometimes all of it) in a very sporadic, arbitrary manner, making it difficult to select precisely the text that I want.

Details of the packages used are as below:
carthik@bahro:~$ apt-cache policy evince libpoppler1
evince:
  Installed: 0.5.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.5.2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com dapper/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
libpoppler1:
  Installed: 0.5.1-0ubuntu4
  Candidate: 0.5.1-0ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.1-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com dapper/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I can send someone a copy of the paper that I observed this bug on. I can't upload it due to copyright/ownership restrictions.

Revision history for this message
Carthik Sharma (carthik) wrote :

Reported bug at freedesktop.org bugtracker upon Corey's request.

Revision history for this message
In , Carthik Sharma (carthik) wrote :

In pdf files opened using evince, selecting text makes some punctuation
disappear. This includes

a) commas (,) that occur immediately after text in italics.
b) Letters that occur immediately after an emdash (A long "-" ).

Details of the packages used are as below:
carthik@bahro:~$ apt-cache policy evince libpoppler1
evince:
  Installed: 0.5.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.5.2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com dapper/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
libpoppler1:
  Installed: 0.5.1-0ubuntu4
  Candidate: 0.5.1-0ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.1-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com dapper/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I can send someone a copy of the paper that I observed this bug on. I can't
upload it due to copyright/ownership restrictions.

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
In , Kresp0-yahoo (kresp0-yahoo) wrote :

I have the same problem with "accented" characters (á,é,í,ó,ú) and some special
characters (like "ñ").

Revision history for this message
kresp0 (kresp0) wrote :

I have the same problem with "accented" characters (á,é,í,ó,ú) and some special characters (like "ñ").

Revision history for this message
Petar Vasić (p-vasic) wrote :

It's confirmed in the upstream

Changed in poppler:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Sebastien Bacher (seb128)
Changed in poppler:
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)
Changed in poppler:
assignee: nobody → desktop-bugs
Revision history for this message
cnosal (c-nosal) wrote :

I have the same problem on GNOME evince 2.22.2 on hardy. It's not just punctuation/special chars though, but any random(?) subset of the selected text.

Revision history for this message
Vitor Hugo Barros (b4silence) wrote :

I confirm I'm having the same punctuation/special chars problem using Evince 2.22.2/poppler 0.6.4 (cairo) in Ubuntu 8.04.

Characters like éàõ become '`~ like shown in the screenshots attached.

Revision history for this message
Carthik Sharma (carthik) wrote :

Update for Jaunty Release Candidate:

The characters éàõ display fine, a comma after text in italics still becomes a rectangular box. The em-dashes are fine. I created a pdf file with these characters for testing and am uploading it.

Revision history for this message
In , Albert Astals Cid (aacid) wrote :

Can you check with a newer poppler version?

Revision history for this message
P4man (duvel123) wrote :

It gets weirder. Characters change completely or appear out of nowhere when selecting.
I made a little screencapture to illustrate it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoYslNQ8rEE

Revision history for this message
In , Albert Astals Cid (aacid) wrote :

No answer after 6 months, closing as INVALID, if you ever want to answer,
please reopen the bug if needed

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
status: Confirmed → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Sandertje (bollemans12) wrote :

They not only disappear, but when highlighting certain special symbols (e.g. plus minus sign), they get substituted for something entirely else. For instance, the plus minus sign (±) becomes a capital letter G when selecting.

Revision history for this message
João Gomes (jvpgomes) wrote :

But worse than the fact that the characters disappear when highlighting, is that if one selects, copies and pastes that text the special characters will appear all messed up.

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
importance: Unknown → Low
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
importance: Low → Unknown
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
importance: Unknown → Low
Revision history for this message
Santiago M. Mola (smola) wrote :

It seems to work in Ubuntu Oneiric. Does anyone still suffer this bug?

Revision history for this message
Winnie Evans (wevans460) wrote :

I was unable to recreate this bug. I am using 3.2.1-0ubuntu2.2 oneiric.

Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

Testing this using evince version 3.3.90-0ubuntu2 from Precise I noticed that with the test document provided when I highlighted the italic text I did see a square box after the comman and the words in italics.

Revision history for this message
madbiologist (me-again) wrote :

On Raring with evince 3.6.1-1ubuntu3 and poppler 0.20.5-1ubuntu3 the comma after the italic text still becomes a square box when highlighted by selecting it.

Revision history for this message
madbiologist (me-again) wrote :

The test document now displays the text correctly after it is highlighted.

Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr"
evince 3.10.3-0ubuntu10.1
poppler 0.24.5-2ubuntu4.1

tags: added: hardy jaunty raring
Changed in poppler (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Released
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