Re: [Matplotlib-users] How to mix maths & text in labels ?

[Darren D. <dd...@co...>]

Hi All,

On Thursday 02 June 2005 6:34 pm, William Henney wrote:
>
> There may be a solution that does not involve converting all fonts to
> paths but that was the easiest way out since I was under time-pressure
> and dealing with production staff who seemed to be working from a very
> limited script :)
>
> > > The solution is to convert all fonts to outlines before
> > > submission (and also make sure all bbox coords are +ve). You can do
> > > this with recent versions of ghostscript:
> > >
> > >  gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -q -sDEVICE=3Depswrite -dEPSFitPage \
> > >     -sOutputFile=3Dnew.eps old.eps
> >
> > Coincidentally, I was just addressing the use of gs's epswrite this
> > morning on the matplotlib-devel list. Unfortunately, epswrite will yield
> > a file that does not render well on screen. Given the increasing
> > popularity of online publication, it seems this approach for generating
> > eps files would not be acceptable to scientific journals either.
>
> I think it looks fine so long as you turn on the "Smooth line art"
> option in your PDF viewer. Unfortunately, this is not on by default in
> acroread, presumably because it increases rendering times.
>
> If someone can come up with a foolproof way to make figures containing
> TeX fonts that are acceptable to scientific journals, I, for one, would
> be very grateful.

John has gotten us most of the way there. I think the problem I am having=20
embedding these LaTeX-generated eps files is related to the fact that the=20
postscript constructs in the image are not isolated from the main document,=
=20
dvips is not creative in naming them, and therefore the font properties (or=
=20
encoding, or something) are being corrupted.

Since I also have limited time, I could use epswrite for now. The resulting=
=20
figures are not fantastic on screen, (I already had smooth line art enabled=
=20
in Adobe Reader), but marginal improvements can be had by increasing the=20
viewer's resolution. The print version is still good. Since epswrite=20
basically converts the fonts to an image anyway, I would like to propose on=
e=20
last time that if text.usetex is true, we draw the text as an image in eps,=
=20
just until the better solution becomes available. That way the screen versi=
on=20
would still look good, the entire picture would open in Adobe illustrator,=
=20
how big would the files be?

I am going to add an option to use LaTeX instead of TeX to render the text.=
=20
TeX is about 30% faster than LaTeX, but ever since John pointed out how muc=
h=20
the bitstream fonts suck, I cant help but notice how much the bitstream fon=
ts=20
suck. Right now I am using the pslatex package, and these fonts are quite a=
n=20
improvement. The txfonts package is also nice. How do people feel about two=
=20
more rc options: one to select tex or latex, and another to choose the font=
=20
package?