Re: [matplotlib-devel] latex in ps via psfrag

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

Hi everyone,

On Wednesday 08 June 2005 11:42 am, Fernando Perez wrote:
> Darren Dale wrote:
>
> > Would you send me a copies of the bad eps and the fixed version, and al=
so
> > a copy of ps2eps? I don't have that program on my system, and was not
> > able to find it on the web.
>
> Here goes. As it turns out, ps2eps is a simple perl script which I got god
> knows when.  So people won't actually have it on their systems, it's
> something that lives in /usr/local/bin on my box, sorry.
>
> But no worries.  I can lie with using ps2eps for now, until I can upgrade
> to a moer current ghostscript.

I am still unhappy with the bitmapped fonts that result from the conversion=
 to=20
eps, using ghostscript's epswrite. They look ok in Adobe Reader, but not so=
=20
in kpdf or ggv. (I was inspired to look at this today after discovering tha=
t=20
Adobe Reader for linux does not display correctly when I run in 1024x768=20
resolution on my native 1680x1050 laptop. Kpdf displays correctly, but the=
=20
fonts are terrible.)

I looked into ps2eps some more today, to see if it would generate a file th=
at=20
I could embed in a latex document. The short answer is no.=20

The long answer is that PSFrag was not designed to do what I am trying to d=
o:=20
generate an eps file that can later be embedded in a document. It uses a=20
number of PostScript operators that are illegal in an eps file: setglobal,=
=20
statusdict and userdict. Here is the blurb from PostScript Language=20
Reference, Second Edition, Appendix I: setglobal disrupts page independence=
=20
and nesting of included documents. [...] Creation and modification of globa=
l=20
objects are uneffected by save-restore operators.

I think it might be worth looking into the way PyX is dealing with TeX/LaTe=
X,=20
as someone recently suggested. PyX's eps output looks just like standard (n=
o=20
tex) MPL output, where these nesting issues do not exist. They even have th=
e=20
same issue of dumping entire font definitions into the output.

Darren