Selecting some text does not show glyphs through selection

Distribution

Mint 22 Wilma

Package version

4.2.2

Frequency

Always

Bug description

I recently bought a new computer, and after being a long-term Linux Mint 20 user, I installed LM MATE 22 on my new computer. I teach and often highlight (just with the selection tool) PDFs for the class to see. Please compare the behavior on xreader 1.6.5 (LM MATE 20) and xreader 4.2.2 (LM MATE 22)

The source PDF is glyph_example.pdf

Steps to reproduce

1. Open a PDF either with a glyphless font or a font that is not on your machine in xreader
2. Select some text using your cursor

Expected behavior

1.6.5

The selection should be transparent, so that the reader can see the image underneath.

Actual behavior:

4.2.2

Additional information

May be related to #523

The same behavior can be seen on LM 22 Cinnamon and LMDE 6. However, there is no issue with Mint 21 Cinnamon or MATE.

There have been others who suggested this is a poppler issue. I tend to agree, as this also affects Atril on LM 22.

NOTE: It appears running a previous version of xreader on the system also doesn't solve anything.

Start by reproducing the selection behavior in xreader with the provided glyph_example.pdf, comparing the reported versions and fonts that are unavailable or glyphless. Read related issue #523 and the linked Poppler issue to determine whether the behavior belongs to xreader or its dependency. Done means selected text remains transparent enough to show the underlying image, as in xreader 1.6.5.