Re: Greek letters in the EMF terminal

[James R. V. Z. <jr...@co...>]

Ethan Merritt <merritt@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 September 2009 13:56:19 James R. Van Zandt wrote:
> > 
> > ...the EMF terminal's support for "enhanced text" appears to be
> > broken.  Any labels that use "enhanced" features (superscripts
> > and/or Symbol font) do not appear at all.
>
> Sorry. I can't reproduce this at all.
> I attach the emf output from running your script, and also a screenshot
> of what the emf file looks like when viewed with the windows utility
> program ENHMETA.EXE.    All looks as it should. 
>
> I'll also send you (offline) a powerpoint with the figure embedded in it.
> That's not a test that I've made before.
>
> And here it is.  Looks fine in PowerPoint run under linux, although the
> font is way too small.

When I use PowerPoint 2003 under Windows XP to view your PowerPoint
file, or to import your .emf file, only two of the labels are shown.
That's what I saw using PowerPoint 2007 under XP on a different machine.

However: If I select the figure and navigate to Drawing | Ungroup, it
tells me that isn't a drawing but a picture, and offers to convert it
to a drawing object.  If I do that, the rest of the labels appear.  If
I "ungroup" , then I can select and edit individual characters of the
labels.

I theorize that the .emf file, like an encapsulated PostScript file,
includes not only the vector drawing commands and label characters,
but also a bitmapped preview of the figure.  When PowerPoint 2003
imports the file, it only shows the bitmap.  However, the bitmap
either omits some labels, or includes them in a way PowerPoint misses.
When PowerPoint "converts to a drawing object", it re-renders the
display and all is well.

PowerPoint will only let me zoom to 400 percent.  If I do that before
the "conversion to a drawing object", the characters are starting to
look pixelated, but no more so than for a new label of the same size.
That suggests if the preview is a bitmap, it must be at a fairly high
resolution, like 300 bpi.

Allin Cottrell writes:
> All the labels display correctly when I view the emf file in
> OpenOffice.org 2.4.

And version 3.1.0 shows it correctly here.  I guess oo either
correctly interprets the bitmap, or else re-renders the display from
the vector commands and character codes.  oo does not let me select
individual elements of the figure (lines, labels, or characters) or to
"ungroup".  That suggests it's showing a bitmap.  On the other hand, I
can zoom way in (3000 percent) on a character or a sloping line without
seeing any pixelation, which indicated it's *not* just showing a
bitmap.  I guess oo can render the vector commands but not edit them.


I still think there's an incompatibility between the gnuplot .emf file
and what PowerPoint expects, but now I have a workaround.

           - Jim Van Zandt