Re: emf woes

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Ethan Merritt wrote:

> On Friday 23 April 2004 03:31 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
> > I does seem to have a problem with gnuplot's EMF files, though.  In
> > particular, its 'printemf' tool complains
> >
> > GetEnhMetaFileW warning: read unknown record type 84 of size 80
> > GetEnhMetaFileW warning: read unknown record type 84 of size 84
> > [... several more ...]
> 
> Strange.  My (admittedly outdated) spec for EMF says record type 84
> is	EMR_EXTTEXTOUTW
> 
> > Seems like that is about our EMF_put_text() calling
> >
> >     EMF_write_emr(84, 76 + len * 2);    /* exttextoutw, yes it's the 16bits char version! */
> 
> which is consistent with that comment.

The warning is about the fact that libEMF doesn't support ExtTextOutW.
Which is the "wide character" (i.e.: Microsoft's idea of Unicode) version
of ExtTextOutA.

What I really don't understand well is why our emf.trm would want to use
the wide-character version.

> > Note that this little snippet from libEMF also contains a valuable hint
> > at the actual EMF definition.  Google finds:
> >
> > http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-234.htm
> 
> From a quick look at the pdf docs there, they seem to be specs for
> Windows 3.1 APIs. That's even older than the spec I already have.

It started off as the Win16 API alright, but it's apparently outgrown that
heritage --- otherwise, EMF wouldn't be part of it at all: AFAIK Win16
can't for the life of it handle EMF.

But it has the benefit of coming from an official standardization body,
instead of directly out of Microsoft Press.  I.e. it's less likely to be
revised whenever somebody in Redmond has an itch to scratch.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.