I have two stations, one running slack64 14.2 and the other one slack 32 bits current. On both of them, Okular display a blank page for all xps files.

There are no particular error messages on both.

Slack 64 13.2 : Okular 0.20.3, KDE 4.14.38, XPS backend 0.3.3

Slack current: Okular 21.12.1, KDE 5.90.0, XPS backend 0.3.3

Can anyone read XPS files using Okular?

On my Pop_OS laptop, Evince reads XPS files OK, fortunately.

Just tested the first example file i found on the Internet: https://example-files.online-convert.com/document/xps/ and it works here
Does it work for you, too? If it does, do you have an example of a not working xps file?

Damn, your example file works perfectly... This is a file that doesn't work:

https://demo.intellique.org/nextclou...5TDkwNswgQG7Y5

shows blank for me. i'm latest -current

Hum... it works fine in Evince 3.36.10 on my Pop_OS machine. I just installed Okular on it (Okular 1.9.3, KDE 5.68.0, XPS backend 0.3.3) and it displays a blank page for both your test file and mine, so it actually fares worse than Okular on Slackware that at least manage to display one of these correctly... I'm afraid that the conclusion is that Okular generally sucks at XPS, and that I should find some other application to see XPS files. Evince is a tough piece though, I'm reluctant to try compiling it. Any other suggestion welcome.

Compiling evince on Slackware -current is a piece of cake, really, if you use Ponce's buildscript: https://github.com/Ponce/slackbuilds.../office/evince

The buildscript is for evince-40.4 and for that version libhandy is a dependency - Ponce has a buildscript for that as well:
https://github.com/Ponce/slackbuilds...aries/libhandy

However, if you build the latest evince version 41.3 (just change the version number in the buildscript) you won't need to install libhandy first, it will be picked up during the build process.

Hum, not a good start:

pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: The 'meson==0.55.3' distribution was not found and is required by the application


I'll try reinstalling meson... But it obviously has more dependancies

You're on Slackware 14.2, so see here:
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/office/evince/

Ponce's repository is for Slackware-current.

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Sorry, I did it again on -current, but it's another one that's missing, meson :/ It's not in the ponce slackbuilds either.
OK, so I've installed meson manually using pip3, then:

../meson.build:442: WARNING: ** XPS support is disabled since libgxps (version >= 0.2.1) is needed


D'oh, as I'm installing evince with the sole purpose of displaying XPS, let's look for libgxps in sbopkg using the ponce repo and try again.

Alas, compiling evince fails:
../backend/meson.build:55:7: ERROR: Function does not take positional arguments.


Nothing more in the logs... Gee, I guess I'll try again installing libhandy anyway just in case, then, using sbopkg.

Ghaaa, it fails too:

[169/170] Linking target glade/libglade-handy-1.so
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
what(): std::bad_alloc
libhandy.SlackBuild : ligne 74 : 29710 Abandon "${NINJA:=ninja}"


Well I'm really stuck now. I see there that's it's a general problem with everything Gnome and Meson >= 0.60:

https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/9441

But I have no frigging idea what is failing and what to edit... where is this "backend/" folder hidden during the build? What creates it?

Nope, you're not running -current. meson is part of Slackware-current.

Edit: before going and installing extra stuff, stop and figure out why something isn't working. Stuff on SBo is supposed to work without installing any external dependencies.

Ha, meson was masked by an older SBo version (sbopkg ignored the existing, newer version -- I didn't think of that). I've removed the 0.61 one, and installed the official version.
Now the Slackbuild is going on, let's cross fingers...

And I have the same failure as when compiling libhandy:

[371/372] Generating org.gnome.Evince.appdata.xml__merge with a custom commandterminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
what(): std::bad_alloc
./evince.SlackBuild : ligne 114 : 658 Abandon "${NINJA:=ninja}"


There's obviously something wrong with "ninja" whatever this command is.

Aaaaand it was again an SBo package of ninja that masked the official one. I've installed the clean version, but it ends badly in a subtly different way:

[371/372] Generating org.gnome.Evince.appdata.xml__merge with a custom commandterminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::length_error'
what(): basic_string::append

I guess it could be your system that is not fully up-to-date.
ninja-1.10.2-x86_64-3 is a stock package here.
libhandy-1.2.3-x86_64-1ponce and evince-40.4-x86_64-1ponce were build one after the other without problem.
evince seems to work ok

At the end of compile time I have :
I guess you need a global :
or
At least I would have at hand a full tree and a bootable media to chroot into system in case something goes south...

Well I can't help with that specific error. But I just tried building evince in a clean chroot and it built just fine. Installed and tested it out and it seems to work ok. So I'd say it's something on your system.