[Simon The Nimon]

System Specs

Operating System – Linux Lite	Linux Lite 7.8
CPU / Processor	Intel Core i5-3470
Memory (RAM)	16 GB
Storage	Hard Drive (HDD)
Graphics (GPU)	Intel HD Graphics 2000

I have been having an issue with viewing an printing PDF's on and off for some time. The viewer will start showing or printing blank pages after a while. I have tried a verity of viewers and they all do the same thing with the exception of web browsers. No problem with any other type of document or image just PDF's.

My suspicion was the Poppler Library as the version that comes with Linux Lite is quite old and there are several likely sounding bugs fixed in later versions. I have tried unsuccessfully to upgrade the library, I am getting a lovely collection of errors at the moment. So before I wade into that as well I thought it would be a good idea to check here that I had not missed anything blindingly obvious!

[Şerban S.]

I have been having an issue with viewing an printing PDF's on and off for some time. [...] My suspicion was the Poppler Library [...]

Hi!

I never had this type of issue. The problem seems to be a machine/software installation related one.
What am I using is Okular  25.12.3.
The OS is Linux Lite 8.2 on an Dell machine (see signature).
Given the particular specs of your machine, the available resources cover more than the minimum requirements for Lite 8.2 so I recommend you to download the ISO and install the Linux Lite 8.2 version.
It ships the 7.3 kernel and the hardware support is probably far better than the one provided by the 6.x kernel.
As far as I know, this kind of issue is usually generated by two aspects:
A) System font settings;
B) Video chipset poor support or, overlapping drivers.
Since I don't know how to solve the problem in a single step, all I can say is... "step by step".
That is why I recommend a system upgrade. Your CPU/RAM combination is powerful enough to support the Lite 8.2 very well.
If even after the upgrade the issue still persists, then we will test another path.

Best regards!

[stevef]

Is it possible to provide a link to a legitimate pdf that consistently gives blank pages when viewing ?

[Şerban S.]

Is it possible to provide a link to a legitimate pdf that consistently gives blank pages when viewing ?

Hi Steve!

As I said before, over the years, I had minor and various troubles related to system settings.
In the previous post, I pointed out the most logical solution: system upgrade.
Now, if we download the "guilty" PDF and it works fine on a number of configurations, where do we find with the issue? Back to square one?
Remember that the PDF rendering, depends on your system's settings --- to name only the software context. The hardware context, might lead to this kind of issue, only IF the kernel hardware support has flaws. Does it? If so, how do we rule that out, if we keep the faulty kernel support?
Maybe I understood wrong, but so far, it seems that both viewing AND exporting as PDF (Print... PDF) works wrong. That means that some drivers aren't either working properly or aren't working at all.
I don't know the whole list of changes from the kernel 6.8.0.x to 7.3.0.x but what I am sure of, is that there were lots of fixes included (Jerry confirmed that in a previous post) so, I expect a lot of annoyances will disappear once the upgrade is performed.
The other possible scenario, is the system font settings. Years ago, before UTF-8, I had many trouble with this, because I live in România and I needed a special font set (ISO 8859-16). The default system settings were "US" and since most PDFs were in English, they rendered OK. However, when trying to export a text written in Română, I got lots of garbage due to the font settings (US - UK). Some PDFs embed fonts, some others, rely on system fonts. Western fonts, did not have the specific chars for my language and replaced them with placeholders or some arbitrary symbols.
As you can understand, the problem can be solved only eliminating the basic, the fundamental source, which as I see it, is the hardware support. Hence, the upgrade path I recommended.

Best regards!

[valtam]

I've been using https://github.com/storytold/pdfcraft lately.

[Şerban S.]

I've been using https://github.com/storytold/pdfcraft lately.

Thanks!

Tested. Works for me. 
I hope it works for Simon, too.
Best regards!