verify_layout.py's skipped: message blamed only the xpdf-based pdftotext that
Git for Windows puts ahead of Poppler in PATH. A real Poppler can abort too:
26.0x before 26.05 crashes -bbox/-bbox-layout/-htmlmeta on a PDF whose Info
dictionary carries an empty string in any field, and hyperref writes exactly
that for every field it does not set. A lualatex/pdflatex document built with
hyperref and no \hypersetup{pdftitle=...} - an ordinary /add-template CV
template, not a malformed one - hits this with a working Poppler installed,
and the old message sent the reader to check their PATH when nothing was
wrong with it.
Named both causes in the raised message, the code comment above it, and the
module docstring. Behavior is unchanged: either cause still degrades to
skipped: exit 2, not exit 1, since a broken extractor is still not a broken
document.
Added test_poppler_abort_on_empty_info_string_names_that_cause_too, mocking
subprocess.run to raise CalledProcessError the way a real Poppler 26.0x abort
does (exit 1, a libc++abi out_of_range trace on stderr) rather than the
xpdf case's exit 99 - the two failures are the same exception type with
different exit codes and stderr text, so the message has to actually
distinguish them, not just catch the one class. Negative control: this test
fails against the pre-fix message with "'Poppler aborted' not found in
'...a pdftotext without -bbox is usually the xpdf build...'".
Thanks to @main-sounds-audio for the report and the isolated repro (which
field, which Poppler modes, five runs of five) that pinned this to Poppler's
own upstream regression (issue #1699, fixed in 26.05.0) rather than an
extraction-library swap.
Fixes#451
* feat(layout): measure compiled PDF layout instead of eyeballing it
/apply Step 5b asks for layout properties and executes none of them: they are
checked by reading the rendered page, which is exactly how they get missed.
The failure that motivates this is silent under every existing check. A moderncv
\cventry renders as a tabular, so an entry is one unbreakable block; when it does
not fit in the space left, the whole entry moves to the next page and leaves a
hole behind. The document still compiles, still reports the expected page count,
and still passes tools/verify_pdf.py. Observed in the wild at 273pt, roughly 19
blank lines, mid-page, on a CV whose visual read looked fine.
tools/verify_layout.py reports per page where the text starts and stops, bottom
whitespace as a share of page height, and the largest gap between lines, then
exits 1 on a hole over 100pt, a non-final page ending more than 25% early, body
text colliding with the page-number footer, a final page more than 35% empty, or
an entry header or section heading stranded at a page break.
Page count is deliberately not checked here - verify_pdf.py --pages already does
that, and two implementations of one rule drift. Geometry comes from Poppler
pdftotext -bbox, already a dependency; a missing Poppler exits 2 with "skipped:"
rather than failing the run.
Tests build synthetic Page/Line geometry, so the suite needs neither Poppler nor
a LaTeX toolchain and runs on the existing 3.10-3.14 matrix.
* fix(layout): survive Windows encoding and a pdftotext without -bbox
Review found two failures on the repo's primary platform:
subprocess.run(..., text=True) decoded pdftotext's UTF-8 output with the
Windows ANSI codepage and crashed on the stock cv/main_example.pdf. It now
passes encoding="utf-8" with errors="replace" at the call site, matching the
fix verify_pdf.py already carries from #369.
Git for Windows ships an xpdf-based pdftotext that shadows Poppler in a
default PATH and has no -bbox flag; it exited 99, the CalledProcessError
escaped, and the run ended in exit 1 - indistinguishable from a real layout
problem, which would send /apply chasing a phantom hole. That now routes to
the existing "skipped:" exit 2 path with a message naming the likely cause,
covered by three tests on the extractor-failure path.
Also from review:
- .claude/settings.json and security_guards.py gain the verify_layout.py
permission entries. apply.md Step 5b runs the tool on every /apply, so
without them every run prompts.
- The docstring and CHANGELOG no longer call Poppler a dependency
verify_pdf.py relies on. Since #369 verify_pdf prefers pypdf and Poppler is
the fallback; word bboxes have no pypdf equivalent, so this is the one step
that still wants it, and that is now what the text says.
- Docstring and apply.md state that the thresholds are calibrated for the
stock moderncv and cover.cls geometry, and that the shipped example CV
fails the thin-final-page rule by design.
- largest_gap documents that it measures top-to-top, so a tall line inflates
the gap by its own height - over-detection, the safe direction.
- The test module imports via tools.verify_layout like test_verify_pdf.py
instead of sys.path.insert.
* fix(verify_layout): quote only the first stderr line in the skip message (#378)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013fqqLgQSnwgWkv98twQhHi
---------
Co-authored-by: Mads Lorentzen <madslorentzen_17@hotmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Souptik Chakraborty