Debian Bug report logs - #1098707
gnome-core: Switch from evince to papers

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jeremy Bícha <jeremy.bicha@canonical.com>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: gnome-core: Switch from evince to papers

Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2025 21:31:58 -0500

Package: gnome-core
Version: 1:47+6
X-Debbugs-CC: debian-gtk-gnome@lists.debian.org

I propose that we switch gnome-core to depend on papers instead of
evince for Debian Trixie.

Background
---------------
Papers had its first release in May 2024. Papers was forked from
Evince after the Papers developers were frustrated that they were
unable to get their merge requests into Evince, particularly a switch
from gtk3 to gtk4 and a partial rewrite in Rust.

Since then, Evince has yet to switch to gtk4 even in its development
branch (despite merge requests being available). Evince has had much
less development than Papers: in number of contributors, number of
commits, and number of new features. My strongest argument to switch
is that Papers is better maintained.

Brief Feature Comparison
--------
- Papers generally has the same features as Evince.
- Papers does not support the DVI, PostScript or XPS formats. You can
use imagemagick to convert those documents to PDF.
- Papers does not have bookmarks support which is different from table
of contents links for PDFs which have those. The Notes feature is
similar to bookmarks.
- Papers has improved Night Mode and has added digital signature
verification. The UI is a bit confusing but you can also use Papers to
sign PDFs if you have certificates such as those present in Spain's
national ID cards.

Status in GNOME
-------
I believe it is likely but not certain that GNOME 49 will switch from
Evince to Papers. The biggest blocker on GNOME's side is screen reader
support. I don't think screen reader support will be working for GNOME
48 but it is being worked on. [1] [2]

Status in Ubuntu
-----
Ubuntu has announced they will try to switch from Evince to Papers for
Ubuntu 25.04. It is currently blocked on a review by the Ubuntu
Security Team. [3]

Screen Reader
------
My opinion is that Evince's Screen Reader support is bad enough that I
don't think it is actually used. Firefox can open and read PDFs very
well.

I emailed the Debian accessibility list about switching to Papers. Sam
Hartman replied confirming that he has been using Firefox for PDFs,
that Evince's screen reader support isn't as bad as I feared (but he
still had to be told that it existed), and that he wouldn't hugely
mind if we switched. [4]

How to Switch
--------
It's a simple swap in gnome-core. Swapping the Print Preview feature
is more work. evince-previewer is hardcoded in several places. I think
the least disruptive way to handle this (least disruptive to other
desktop environments etc) is to patch libraries to use
papers-previewer by default and fall back to evince-previewer.

We need to patch
- gtk+3.0 (mousepad is a good test app)
- gtk4 (Have to use GDK_DEBUG=no-portals  then gnome-text-editor or
gtk4-demo's Printing demo works)
- xdg-desktop-portal-gnome (GTK4 uses portals by default, so use
gnome-text-editor)

Optional
- gtk+2.0 (xournal could be a test app)
- xdg-desktop-portal-gtk (This is more about enablement for desktops
other than GNOME. So maybe test with Cinnamon and gnome-text-editor)

Other
gedit bundles its own print preview feature so don't use that for
testing these changes

References
--------
[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/AppOrganization/-/issues/24
[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Incubator/papers/-/issues/46
[3] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-25-04-mid-cycle-roadmap/55690
[4] https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/2025/02/msg00019.html

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha

Message #10 received at 1098707@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Frederic Peters <fpeters@debian.org>

To: 1098707@bugs.debian.org

Cc: debian-gtk-gnome@lists.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#1098707: gnome-core: Switch from evince to papers

Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2025 08:26:16 +0100

Hi,

Jeremy Bícha wrote:
> I propose that we switch gnome-core to depend on papers instead of
> evince for Debian Trixie.

I installed papers yesterday and in my case I was not impressed as it 
feels much slower than evince, both at startup and in operation, with 
a sensible lag when opening the headerbar menu.

Maybe it's related to me still using X, not Wayland. (?)

Also, I inadvertently ran papers *.pdf in a directory with a bunch of  
files (but not that much, 28 files, for a total of 13M), and the ouf 
of memory killer had to intervene.

I did not investigate further as I had no time for it and it was just 
simpler to switch back to evince. Looking at it now, with the same 
simple PDF, Papers consume ~4 times the memory Evince consume.

Hopefully it works better for others and performance/memory issues 
will be addressed but maybe the switch could be delayed to the next 
release?


        Fred

Message #15 received at 1098707@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jeremy Bícha <jeremy.bicha@canonical.com>

To: Frederic Peters <fpeters@debian.org>

Cc: 1098707@bugs.debian.org, debian-gtk-gnome@lists.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#1098707: gnome-core: Switch from evince to papers

Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2025 12:06:34 -0500

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 2:26 AM Frederic Peters <fpeters@debian.org> wrote:
> I did not investigate further as I had no time for it and it was just
> simpler to switch back to evince. Looking at it now, with the same
> simple PDF, Papers consume ~4 times the memory Evince consume.

Yes, Papers uses more memory than most other apps I am running now
other than web browsers or Electron apps. I believe this is true for
any Rust app, so this issue also applies to Loupe which we now use by
default instead of eog. I think this is because Rust apps are
currently compiled statically in Debian instead of using shared
libraries like C apps. I don't think this will change a few months
from now and might not change before we release Forky.

My opinion is that I wouldn't block switching because of this issue.
It is still possible to install Evince for people who have the need to
open many PDF files simultaneously. Firefox (and most web browsers)
can also open PDFs natively; although I guess that wouldn't help for
conserving memory.

A few other things I've learned since starting this conversation:
- RHEL 10 Beta and similar distros have already switched from evince
to papers. RHEL 10 Beta is generally shipping GNOME 47 so this is
arguably even more aggressive than Debian switching.
- Based in part on Ubuntu and Debian's actions, the developers of
Fedora Workstation 42 (to be released approximately in May with GNOME
48) are considering switching to Papers also.
- Once Papers is accepted into GNOME Core, the display name will
change to "Document Viewer" like was done for Evince. I'd like to
include that string in Papers 48.0 upstream so that it can be
translated early and we may then include a patch to update the
.desktop file with the more permanent name.
- Maybe we would then change Evince's .desktop to "Evince" which is
already translated. This would help users differentiate the apps.
- We also include gnome-sushi in the default install which currently
still uses GTK3. This means we would keep the Evince libraries
installed but not the Evince app.

I think a reasonable deadline to make these kinds of default app swaps
is the Transition Freeze so I'd like to wrap up this conversation by
the end of this weekend and make a decision by late Sunday or early
Monday.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha

Message #20 received at 1098707@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jeremy Bícha <jeremy.bicha@canonical.com>

To: 1098707@bugs.debian.org

Cc: debian-gtk-gnome@lists.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#1098707: gnome-core: Switch from evince to papers

Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2025 11:25:36 -0400

I didn't see enthusiasm for my proposed change and I didn't end up
proposing the new translated string upstream. It's quite late for
Trixie so this change will need to wait for Forky.

I believe Ubuntu and RHEL 10 Beta (and related distros) are the only
distros to have switched to Papers early. Fedora 42 still uses Evince.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha

Message #23 received at 1098707-submitter@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jeremy Bícha <noreply@salsa.debian.org>

To: 1098707-submitter@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#1098707 marked as pending in meta-gnome3

Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2025 11:14:14 +0000

Control: tag -1 pending

Hello,

Bug #1098707 in meta-gnome3 reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/meta-gnome3/-/commit/0a751567b132d4d0ab4857b34adc36e336875488

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update changelog

Closes: #1098707
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/1098707

Message #30 received at 1098707-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org>

To: 1098707-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#1098707: fixed in meta-gnome3 1:49+1

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:20:17 +0000

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Source: meta-gnome3
Source-Version: 1:49+1
Done: Jeremy Bícha <jbicha@ubuntu.com>

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
meta-gnome3, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1098707@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Jeremy Bícha <jbicha@ubuntu.com> (supplier of updated meta-gnome3 package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Format: 1.8
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2025 19:06:19 +0200
Source: meta-gnome3
Built-For-Profiles: noudeb
Architecture: source
Version: 1:49+1
Distribution: experimental
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <pkg-gnome-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Changed-By: Jeremy Bícha <jbicha@ubuntu.com>
Closes: 1091863 1098707
Changes:
 meta-gnome3 (1:49+1) experimental; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Jeremy Bícha ]
   * gnome-core: Follow GNOME and switch from evince to papers
     (Closes: #1098707) and from totem to showtime
   * gnome-core: Add Depends: totem-video-thumbnailer
   * gnome: remove shotwell since loupe now has basic image editing
   * Bump Standards Version to 4.7.2
 .
   [ Simon McVittie ]
   * gnome: Demote gnome-music from Recommends to Suggests.
     GNOME Music is still part of the Core Apps module (at least for now),
     but it isn't clear that it's desirable to install it by default when
     a Debian GNOME desktop is installed. By demoting it to Suggests,
     it will remain installed on upgraded systems but will not be part
     of new installations.
     (Closes: #1091863)
   * d/control: Sort meta-gnome-core-apps in the same order as upstream
   * d/control: Note divergences from upstream meta-gnome-core-apps,
     meta-gnome-core-shell modulesets.
     This makes it clearer which divergences are accidental (us not
     keeping up with upstream changes) and which are intentional.
Checksums-Sha1:
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 ab029751536c3b8f212a061f3596c5e76ddc3f43 29956 meta-gnome3_49+1.tar.xz
 291e7fd8441f2c0f65a4a6321a7e04683e87cad1 6909 meta-gnome3_49+1_source.buildinfo
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 d94f469552968a4f6a3495c3560cd91d34a4bc33269d7cbb589ac8e85d4480a3 29956 meta-gnome3_49+1.tar.xz
 a2b9d749f5f041ef2f3cc57d59d1e21d9ad9731f000928bc4c4b6c26ee87a6d8 6909 meta-gnome3_49+1_source.buildinfo
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 e92948194d7b5d110e15efc134552e76 29956 metapackages optional meta-gnome3_49+1.tar.xz
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