Re: pm3d for emf terminal and point types

[Ethan A M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 06:14, Dr. Johannes Zellner wrote:
> This gives me the idea of rather having a terminal independent recode
> option like
> 
>     set recode "from encoding" "to encoding"
> 
> which recodes all strings before passing them to the terminal driver.
> This would make it possible to have an encoding in the gnuplot input
> file which is different from what is expected by the terminal driver.
> In the emf case, the sequence of commands could then look like this:
> 
> a) for writing a 16 bit UTF-16LE emf file (input file is UTF-8 encoded):
> 
>     set recode "UTF-8" "UTF-16LE"
>     set term emf unicode # turn on 16 bit UTF-16 for emf
> 
> b) for writing a 8 bit latin1 emf file (input file is UTF-8 encoded):
> 
>     set recode "UTF-8" "LATIN1"
>     set term emf nounicode # turn OFF unicode --> write 1-byte iso-latin1
> 
> c) and using the same UTF-8 input file for postscript:
> 
>     set recode "UTF-8" "LATIN1"
>     set term post # which doesn't handle UTF-8
> 
> Any comments?

WAYYY too much trouble.  The whole point of locale support is so that
individual applications do not have to re-invent and re-implement [badly]
the same basic tasks of multi-language support.  We should rather be
looking for way to deprecate the existing encoding-related code and rely
on external mechanisms for internationalization.

Anyhow, the document you pointed to is not a spec for emf. It is 
desciption of several generation of Windows' API.  The limitation to 
UTF-16 is a Windows problem as I understand it, not anything in
particular to do with the "real" EMF.

I've done a little bit more Google-hunting for emf information.
I still haven't found a proper spec, but I have found enough info
to discourage me from ever being able to implement enhanced text mode.
The thing is, my main motivation for spiffing up emf was so that it
could be recommended to MSWord users, seeing as MSW is so unreliable
at importing eps files.  But apparently MSWord support for emf is also
rather poor.  The few text layout programs I have tracked down that
can put out emf come with warnings that the layout will be wrong 
when viewed in MSWord.  So I am reluctantly giving up on the idea.

Perhaps Vista will finally offer some truly standards-compliant
vector graphics support.  But I'm not holding my breath.


-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742