#1133865 Please implement showing XPS files in evince and papers

Package:
evince
Source:
evince
Description:
Document (PostScript, PDF) viewer
Submitter:
Albert Nash
Date:
2026-04-15 21:31:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1133865#5
Date:
2026-04-15 00:39:20 UTC
From:
To:
I use papers 48.3-1. I submit the bug report against both packages because papers is a fork of evince, so the root cause is likely to be the same.

Grab https://example-files.online-convert.com/document/xps/example.xps and issue
evince example.xps
or
papers example.xps

In case of evince, you get

‘Unable to open document “file:///tmp/example.xps”.
File type Zip archive (application/zip) is not supported’

In case of papers, you get

‘Unable to Open Document
File type Zip archive (application/zip) is not supported’

However, in the package description at https://packages.debian.org/forky/evince we clearly see
“XML Paper Specification (XPS)”.

Because of this discrepancy, we have a bug for evince.

In the description of the package papers we don't see “XPS”. So showing XPS files is a wishlist item for papers.

I'd be grateful for a fix / an implementation.

To compare: Okular 4:25.04.2-1 happily shows the contents of the document example.xps.
#1133865#12
Date:
2026-04-15 01:12:21 UTC
From:
To:
Control: affects -1 -papers

The papers app intentionally does not support XPS files.

Are you able to provide the XPS document you tried to view?

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha
#1133865#19
Date:
2026-04-15 01:26:53 UTC
From:
To:
This is unfortunate. As a wishlist item, I'd still be happy to see this implemented. My use case is viewing archived documents.

I now attached it. It's taken from the URL I provided in my original report.
#1133865#24
Date:
2026-04-15 20:33:56 UTC
From:
To:
For an older XPS, cf. http://www.xpsdev.com/content/files/xps-document-example.xps.

A self-generated a XPS file is attached that, in terms of two simple tests, is very roughly similar to my private files (generated by Printing to XPS in some Windows version around 2013 and kept undisclosed here):

$ filename=xps_test.xps && file $filename && unzip -p $filename FixedDocumentSequence.fdseq | grep -o 'xmlns="[^"]*"'
xps_test.xps: Microsoft OOXML
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xps/2005/06"
#1133865#29
Date:
2026-04-15 21:28:10 UTC
From:
To:
Moreover, there is a huge archive in https://web.archive.org/web/20100911214740/http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/a/16acc601-1b7a-42ad-8d4e-4f0aa156ec3e/SampleXpsDocuments_1_0.exe, same as https://github.com/HiraokaHyperTools/SampleXpsDocuments_1_0 .