[pdftex] pdftex core dump when including certain pdf files

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2016-07-21 at 07:08:27 +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

 > 
 > >  >   ps2pdf pdftex-output.pdf out.pdf
 > >  > 
 > >  > which indeed reduces the file size and the number of subsetted
 > >  > fonts by 30%, but there is a problem that makes all links
 > >  > disappear...  We have to further investigate.
 > > 
 > > Yes, the problem is that in a PDF file the contents of pages and
 > > links are stored at different places.
 > 
 > Well, it's not clear to me why normal PDF viewers display the
 > original input file correctly without complaints, but ghostscript
 > creates a crappy output file.

Please send me an input file and tell me what you've done in order to
produce a (crappy) output file.  I never encountered such problems.

 > > It's not straightforward to keep the links.  What are you doing in
 > > order to retain the links?  I suppose that LuaTeX's epdf library
 > 
 > Perhaps a misunderstanding.  The links in the input PDF file *are*
 > valid, and after the ps2pdf run they are not.  I don't do anything
 > special with the links.

Certainly a misunderstanding.  I expected this behavior and thought
that you have a solution.  What we actually need is a way to extract
links from external files.  Inserting them into the output file is
possible with pdftex, luatex, and the information can probably passed
to Ghostscript via the pdfmark operator.

There is a program accompanied by a Perl script which can extract
links but I don't remember its name.  And for the sake of portability
I prefer a luatex solution anyway.

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                    mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
------------------------------------------------------------------