Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
But then we'll have the perpetual problem of people not having the proper header file, which is unsupported by poppler as a public file.
Considering the importance of PDF functionality (looking over the list archives, back in the summer, bulia said something to the effect that Inkscape was now able to compete with professional apps because of the new pdf stuff) I think the dependency on poppler-glib is not a significant disadvantage, especially if the option to not compile with poppler support exists. (Wasn't there talk recently of having a compile-time switch determine whether to include poppler or internal pdf support? Not a perfect solution, but might help if people are determined to keep deps down.)
Also, I'd guess that many gtk apps which use/will use poppler will depend on poppler-glib functions anyway - but I really don't know, so can't say for certain.
The problem here is not just that the missing header prevents functionality. The problem is that it breaks compilation. If poppler is installed correctly (according to poppler devs), and you compile Inkscape with poppler support, it fails.
I understand the need to keep dependencies to a minimum; however, such powerful functionality may merit a new set of dependencies. Maybe it's time to reconsider?
Would it be possible to resolve this issue from inkscape's side of the poppler issue soon?
I've been using inkscape-0.45.1 for about three months, and I'm eager to resume using the trunk, especially in the run-up to 0.46. Thanks.