I've recently been getting 'PDF' files from someone which my usual RO
software can't open and render. Since they are nominally accounts with bank details, etc, I can't safely put up an example for people to examine.

The main app I normally use is "PDFfile" ver 3.03.1.25alpha 9(22 Aug 2015).
But other apps also fail.

Just get an endless hourglass.

Is there a newer RO version/app that stands more chance of working?

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

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In message <[email protected]>
Jim Lesurf <[email protected]> wrote:

I've recently been getting 'PDF' files from someone which my usual RO software can't open and render. Since they are nominally accounts with bank details, etc, I can't safely put up an example for people to examine.

Becoming more common issue, they are often encrypted which we can't open,
or using a much newer PDF format.

The main app I normally use is "PDFfile" ver 3.03.1.25alpha 9(22 Aug 2015). But other apps also fail.

You could try !MuView or !Ghostview

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/vfp/ for MuView

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/downloads.html for the GhostView (select the Postscript and PDF viewer entry)

No promises but they do open some PDF but then the one you use now.

--
Chris Hughes

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In article <[email protected]>,
Jim Lesurf <[email protected]> wrote:

I've recently been getting 'PDF' files from someone which my usual RO software can't open and render. Since they are nominally accounts with
bank details, etc, I can't safely put up an example for people to
examine.

The main app I normally use is "PDFfile" ver 3.03.1.25alpha 9(22 Aug
2015). But other apps also fail.

Just get an endless hourglass.

Is there a newer RO version/app that stands more chance of working?

Jim

I also have this problem and have done so for a while.
My solution is throw the PDF into Foxit PDF Reader, Windows side, Save it
out back to RISC OS and that version will load into My RISC OS PDF apps.

Dave

--

Dave Triffid

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In message <[email protected]>
Jim Lesurf <[email protected]> wrote:

In article <e5f45f825b.chris@mytardis>, Chris Hughes
<[email protected]> wrote:

You could try !MuView or !Ghostview

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/vfp/ for MuView

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/downloads.html for the GhostView (select
the Postscript and PDF viewer entry)

No promises but they do open some PDF but then the one you use now.

Nope, alas, no success. :-/

Keep getting an endless hourglass whatever app I try. Have to do something like a ctrl-break to stop it!

Either try a ALT-F12 to trigger the watchdog, or if just the hourglass
going all the time, do a CTRL-F12 and then type HOFF, that turns off the
hour glass.



--
Chris Hughes

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In article <e5f45f825b.chris@mytardis>, Chris Hughes
<[email protected]> wrote:

You could try !MuView or !Ghostview

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/vfp/ for MuView

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/downloads.html for the GhostView (select
the Postscript and PDF viewer entry)

No promises but they do open some PDF but then the one you use now.

Nope, alas, no success. :-/

Keep getting an endless hourglass whatever app I try. Have to do something
like a ctrl-break to stop it!

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article <[email protected]>,
Dave <[email protected]> wrote:

I also have this problem and have done so for a while.
My solution is throw the PDF into Foxit PDF Reader, Windows side, Save it
out back to RISC OS and that version will load into My RISC OS PDF apps.

When I get a chance I'll try the Linux prog I use.

No Windows in our house...

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In message <[email protected]>
Jim Lesurf <[email protected]> wrote:

In article <e5f45f825b.chris@mytardis>, Chris Hughes
<[email protected]> wrote:

You could try !MuView or !Ghostview

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/vfp/ for MuView

https://www.cgransden.co.uk/downloads.html for the GhostView (select
the Postscript and PDF viewer entry)

No promises but they do open some PDF but then the one you use now.

Nope, alas, no success. :-/

Keep getting an endless hourglass whatever app I try. Have to do something like a ctrl-break to stop it!

Jim

Are you sure this is a PDF file? maybe it's an archive. I just received a
file that caused me the same problems hourglass, etc.
Just drag and drop on SparkFs and I got the files that had been zipped.

This may not be your problem, it's just for information.



--
Jean-Michel

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On 18/07/2024 10:30 am, Jim Lesurf wrote:

Since they are nominally accounts with bank
details, etc

Could they be password protected? When financial institutions send me
PDFs they usually are.

Later you said:

When I get a chance I'll try the Linux prog I use.

Firefox can natively render PDFs without external assistance, these
days. It can also add text, graphics and things to PDFs, so you can fill
in forms on-screen and then save a modified copy and send it back.

So far, various bits of officialdom I've sent filled-in PDFs have liked
it and accepted them no problem: it's more legible than handwriting on a printout then scanning it.

I don't like KDE much myself but Okular is about the best Linux PDF
viewer, and it can handle text annotations and other advanced features
that none of the others could handle.

--
Liam Proven -- lproven+es on Hotmail, liamproven+es on AOL & Yahoo https://about.me/liamproven

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In Nachricht <[email protected]>
Jim Lesurf <[email protected]> haben Sie geschrieben:

In article <[email protected]>,
Dave <[email protected]> wrote:

I also have this problem and have done so for a while.
My solution is throw the PDF into Foxit PDF Reader, Windows side, Save it
out back to RISC OS and that version will load into My RISC OS PDF apps.

When I get a chance I'll try the Linux prog I use.

No Windows in our house...

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/el ectron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Don't know if this helps... try to open the PDF with e.g. Edit or Zap.
You'll get a lot of "kisuaheli", but the first line shows, which
PDF-Version your document was created with. Newer PDFs (e.g. 2.0)
won't work, in my experience, on RISC OS and sometime even not on
PDF-Viewers on Linux.

Those PDFs I open under Linux, with the Mozilla-Browser (perhaps
others will work too, just try it). Then I print it with the
PDF-Printer in the browser and save t under a new name. Don't do a
"save as PDF", this only saves back the original PDF. With a little
luck this PDF-file will open in RISC OS ;-) ...
For me this works, even password-protected ones.


Juergen

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In article <[email protected]>, Jean-Michel <[email protected]> wrote:

Are you sure this is a PDF file? maybe it's an archive. I just received
a file that caused me the same problems hourglass, etc. Just drag and
drop on SparkFs and I got the files that had been zipped.

I've looked at the content using DeskEdit. It starts with a 'PDF' format
spec. Not zipped.

I think the problem is that it is 'encrypted' in a way that the RO PDF apps can't recognise or render. But it may be something else.

When I get a chance I'll try 'Evince' on Linux to see if that can make
sense of it.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article <fe5812835b.JF@freak67>, <[email protected]> wrote:

Don't know if this helps... try to open the PDF with e.g. Edit or Zap.
You'll get a lot of "kisuaheli", but the first line shows, which
PDF-Version your document was created with. Newer PDFs (e.g. 2.0) won't
work, in my experience, on RISC OS and sometime even not on PDF-Viewers
on Linux.

I had a look with DeskEdit and the top of the file claims PDF 1.4

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

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In article <v7duv1$3086p$[email protected]>, Liam Proven
<[email protected]> wrote:

On 18/07/2024 10:30 am, Jim Lesurf wrote:

Since they are nominally accounts with bank details, etc

Could they be password protected? When financial institutions send me
PDFs they usually are.

Later you said:

When I get a chance I'll try the Linux prog I use.

Firefox can natively render PDFs without external assistance, these
days. It can also add text, graphics and things to PDFs, so you can fill
in forms on-screen and then save a modified copy and send it back.

I tried 'evince' on Linux and this said the pdf was corrupted.

I don't like KDE much myself but Okular is about the best Linux PDF
viewer, and it can handle text annotations and other advanced features
that none of the others could handle.

Noted.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

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Made some progress with this by taking a side-step.

The emails also have an 'HTML' attachment. Until now I've avoided this
because is heavily obfuscated by automated code generation making it hard
to understand via human eyeball. However having written a lot of html I
decided to venture into the bungle.. erm jungle. :-)

The HTML *can* render the content using even NetSurf. So I can now read the
key content. However before trying that I spent some time looking at the 'code'. And noticed two interesting things.

1) a call to a part of Amazon's empire via http to fetch an image for this account. Which, of course, lets Amazon detect and collect data on the
customer getting the account.

2) A link to the *bank* of the business who sent me the 'account' email.
The bank which also provided their business account.

(2) isn't something that bothers me as for obvious reasons they're likely
to know who customers are anyway. Fairy snuff.

But (1) seems a bit naughty to me as it allows a giant non-UK, non-EU
country without their laws on privacy to collect data on individuals.

Fortunately, the HTML works and shows the needed details to me *even* when these bits are deleted. So, readable without it 'calling home'.

Can only leave me to wonder about the weirdness of the 'PDF' attachment's possible 'quirks'.

Intriguing that a UK bank uses this. I wonder if they have also been
affected by the current Doze Disaster!

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
biog http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

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