[tex-live] possible problem with thumbpdf

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 7 July 2010 Heiko Oberdiek wrote:

 > On Wed, Jul 07, 2010 at 03:09:54PM +0100, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
 > 
 > > Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
 > > 
 > > >Then important objects for the perl script thumbpdf are hidden,
 > > >because compressed. In short, thumbpdf doesn't support compressed
 > > >objects. Thus either use \pdfobjcompresslevel=0 or don't use
 > > >thumbpdf. I don't have plans to extend thumbpdf, because supporting
 > > >compressed objects would require a complete rewrite of thumbpdf using
 > > >a PDF library. And I doubt the usefulness of thumbpdf nowadays, when
 > > >AR versions generate thumbnails on the fly very fast.
 > > 
 > > Could "thumbpdf" itself perhaps specify "\pdfobjcompresslevel = 0\relax" ?
 > 
 > There are two PDF files that needs parsing by thumbpdf:
 > * the original PDF file to get the MediaBox.
 > * an internal PDF file with the thumbnail data.
 > 
 > The second case is fixed in version thumbpdf 3.11.
 > The first case can't (at least, thumbpdf.sty generates a warning),
 > but this case is less problematic, because thumbpdf uses a default
 > resolution in case of an unknown MediaBox.

A quite convenient way to get the MediaBox is to use pdfinfo, which
already supports object stream compression.  TL provides binaries for
all supported platforms and I suppose that MikTeX provides it too.

You could check whether pdfinfo is in PATH and fall back to the default
resolution otherwise.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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