Re: [ gnuplot-Patches-982765 ] Patch for AI (Adobe Illustrator) term

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

On Friday 16 July 2004, Harald Harders <h.h...@tu...> wrote:

> Until gnuplot version 4.0 (including), both Illustrator
> versions can read most gnuplot eps files.
> 
> From version 4.1 on, no file can be loaded by Illustrator
> 7.0. The load process is terminated immediately. This means
> the incompatibility between the gnuplot output and
> Illustrator 7.0 seems to be at the top of the files. And it
> seems to be because of a change between 4.0 and 4.1.

The only change of significance is the inclusion of
a set of PostScript Level 2 macros for pattern definitions.
These lines of code start with the comment:

%
% PostScript level 2 pattern fill definitions
% Ethan A Merritt April 2004
%

You seem to have more versions of Illustrator to test on than
I do.  Could you try that experiment?  I.e. generate a *.eps
plot in 4.1 that uses no pattern fill, confirm that Illustrator 
doesn't like it, then edit out those 60 lines of preamble and
see if this makes Illustrator happy again? 

If omitting these 60 lines of preamble code is sufficient, 
then it should be easy enough to add a terminal option
	-noLevel2

I'll have to dummy up some alternative code to be generated
instead so that attempts to use pattern-fill still produce legal
PostScript (probably substitute grey-scale intensity for pattern
fill in this case).


Related note:

It is in principle possible to write conditional code in the
PostScript file itself that tests for Level 2 support, but I have
not had much luck getting it to work right on old printers so
I am dubious about that being a workable solution to the
general case of missing Level 2 support..

-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195