DocView doesn't render PDFs

DocView doesn't render PDFs

[kete]

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Hello,
To skip my distro's old Emacs 23, I built Emacs from GSRC (GNU Source
Release Collection). I am using Trisquel which is based on Ubuntu 12.04
LTS (Precise Pangolin). I prefixed to /usr/local/gnu instead of /gnu,
and I changed the order of some of the $PATH or $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
variables to keep parts of GNOME visible (unlike these
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
ons--http://www.gnu.org/software/gsrc/manual/gsrc.html#Getting-started).

When I try to find a PDF file, I only see the jibberish code or binary
inside the file (screenshot attached), and DocView does not
automatically start. On manual start, it says it cannot render the file.
When I execute ghostscript on the file from dired, I see a small window
generate each page of the PDF and then disappear.

Also, I just found out I can't see a jpeg image.

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Re: DocView doesn't render PDFs

[Stefan Monnier]

> Also, I just found out I can't see a jpeg image.

My guess is that you somehow compiled your Emacs without support for PNG
and JPEG (the former would explain why DocView doesn't work).
Normally, "./configure" would signal an error if it can't find the PNG
or JPEG libraries, tho, so you'd have had to either use a modified
configure script, or to explicitly pass things like --without-png.


        Stefan

Re: DocView doesn't render PDFs

[kete]

I think I might just switch to the Parabola distribution, but thanks, 
I'm having a hard time making jpeg libraries available to GSRC and other 
compiled & stowed software (GNU Stow).