Re: [Plplot-general] Consistent results with Postscript driver

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2005-10-07 20:33+0200 Henning Thielemann wrote:

>
> On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> [...]For
>> typical results, see freeeos.sf.net/coulomb.pdf.
>
> Hm, you have labelled the axes with postscript characters (Times font?).
> Something I couldn't manage, too, so far.
>
> I do not understand what on
> http://plplot.sourceforge.net/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.5.3/output-drivers.html#postscript-driver
> is meant with "text: Use Postscript text (0|1); default 1", but I guess
> it has something to do with the Times font issue.

You don't have to worry about that.  With -dev ps and psc (and several other
devices such as the gd-related ones) the new font system is on by default.
You do have the option of turning it off (and going back to the old standard
Hershey fonts) by using the -drvopt text=0 option.

Since you seem to be having trouble getting the new font system, I suspect
there is some necessary development package or package of fonts not
installed on your system.  Check carefully your ./configure output to see if
there are any warnings about fonts or unicode.

Also, note the the gd-related devices (png, jpeg, and gif) handle unicode
fonts quite differently than the postscript-related devices(psc and ps). The
gd-related case accesses fonts by specific directory and file names
(although in the future we may change that to the more convenient access by
font name using fontconfig) which are configured with ./configure.  (See
./configure --help for details.) In contrast the postscript-related case
uses fixed but standard font names (see include/plfci-type1.h). These font
names, e.g., "Times-Roman" are then put in the appropriate part of the
output postscript file.  That file should display or print properly on any
system that has the standard postscript type 1 fonts installed on the
system.  For my Debian stable platform, the gsfonts package provides the
appropriate standard 35 type1 postscript fonts.

Also note that for the postscript-related devices, there is internal lookup
code to translate unicode order to the specific type 1 font order for the
appropriate 255 type 1 glyph possibilities.  However, because of that
extremely limited number of type1 glyph possibilities, the unicode coverage
of the postscript devices is extremely sparse with many missing glyphs.  The
type1 set of glyphs is adequate for scientific plotting as in the paper I
referenced above.  However, if you want full non-English support you must
use TrueType fonts which are only available on certain non-postscript
devices such as the gd-related ones.  See
http://plplot.sourceforge.net/examples/demo24.php for a non-English PLplot
example done with -dev png.  That example gives poor results for -dev psc
because of the mentioned glyph-choice limitation of Type 1 fonts.  The other
standard examples look good both with both gd-related devices (which use
TrueType fonts) and postscript devices (which use Type1 fonts) because
they don't require the non-English glyphs of example 24.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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