#1059943 libpoppler126: Wrong image rendering on big endian machines

Package:
libpoppler147
Source:
libpoppler147
Description:
PDF rendering library
Submitter:
Hilmar Preusse
Date:
2026-06-08 21:55:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1059943#5
Date:
2024-01-03 22:17:35 UTC
From:
To:
Package: libpoppler126
Version: 22.12.0-2+b1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

don't care about the system information below, these are just from the
system, running reportbug.

The poppler library has an issue rendering images / fonts correctly, when
running on big endian machines. Assume the following code:

#include <memory>
#include <poppler-document.h>
#include <poppler-page.h>
#include <poppler-page-renderer.h>

int main() {
  std::unique_ptr<poppler::document> doc{poppler::document::load_from_file("poppler-data.pdf")};
  std::unique_ptr<poppler::page> page{doc->create_page(0)};

  poppler::page_renderer renderer;
  poppler::image img = renderer.render_page(page.get());
  img.save("test.png", "png");
  return 0;
}

, which renders a file called "poppler-data.pdf" and creates a file called
"test.png". The mentioned sample file can be found here [1]. When compiling
and linking on amd64 the resulting png file looks reasonable...some
glyphs are missing.
Doing the same on a Big Endian box (in my case PowerPC) the picture looks
broken: the colors are different. As far as I know s390x is affected too.
Attached are the two sample files for Little and Big Endian.

Hilmar

[1] https://github.com/TeXworks/texworks/blob/main/testcases/poppler-data.pdf
#1059943#10
Date:
2024-01-03 23:10:38 UTC
From:
To:
Control: affects -1 + src:texworks

Affects texworks. Due to this issue the test suite of TeXworks fails on BE.

H.
#1059943#17
Date:
2026-02-12 22:58:15 UTC
From:
To:
Am 04.01.2024 um 00:10 schrieb Preuße, Hilmar:

Reassign, libpoppler147 still has the issue.

H.
#1059943#26
Date:
2026-06-07 12:28:20 UTC
From:
To:
Am 04.01.2024 um 00:10 schrieb Preuße, Hilmar:
issue is still present. Unfortunately I'm failing to build the minimal
example to actually prove the statement.

H.
#1059943#33
Date:
2026-06-07 12:48:34 UTC
From:
To:
Am 04.01.2024 um 00:10 schrieb Preuße, Hilmar:

Reassign to libpoppler156. As I did not get any response I guess the
issue is still present. Unfortunately I'm failing to build the minimal
example to actually prove the statement.

Update: the test suite of texworks still fails on s390 with the same
error messages.

H.
#1059943#38
Date:
2026-06-07 12:57:54 UTC
From:
To:
Control: reassign -1 src:poppler 22.12.0-2+deb12u1
individual poppler library package is not useful since poppler bumps
their soname every month.

The bug will remain open until it's fixed. Very few people work on
big-endian issues, so it's unlikely you'll get much of a response.
Please consider reporting this issue upstream:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/work_items

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha
#1059943#47
Date:
2026-06-08 21:52:27 UTC
From:
To:
On 07.06.26 Jeremy Bícha (jbicha@debian.org) wrote:

Hello,
OK, forwarded. Let's see how it goes.

H.