I have tried with a Poppler-based pdftoraster which is currently under development at OpenPrinting and is under consideration to replace the current GhostScript-based pdftoraster.
starts.pdf from comment #20 and #21 takes 53 secs with Poppler-based pdftoraster instead of 10 minutes with GhostScript-based pdftoraster. The PDF file of comment #1 takes 2 minutes with the Poppler-based pdftoraster. The GhostScript-based pdftoraster is already running for 30 min on the PDF file of comment #1 and still running.
So the fix, at least for CUPS-Raster-based drivers will be the replacement of pdftoraster by the Poppler-based one.
I have tried with a Poppler-based pdftoraster which is currently under development at OpenPrinting and is under consideration to replace the current GhostScript-based pdftoraster.
starts.pdf from comment #20 and #21 takes 53 secs with Poppler-based pdftoraster instead of 10 minutes with GhostScript-based pdftoraster. The PDF file of comment #1 takes 2 minutes with the Poppler-based pdftoraster. The GhostScript-based pdftoraster is already running for 30 min on the PDF file of comment #1 and still running.
So the fix, at least for CUPS-Raster-based drivers will be the replacement of pdftoraster by the Poppler-based one.