Re: [Plplot-general] hershey chars at 5.6.1

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

On 2006-08-03 13:30+0900 Valery Pipin wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> The following line is perfectly work for ps driver ( plsdev("ps") ) at 5.3.1:
> pllab("TIME, [YR]", "[Wb#u2#d]","#(2412)#(2229)h#d#(2053)#u#(2229)dV#dCZ#u")
>
> For  5.6.1 the chars #(2053) and #(2229) does not work.
> I've tried this for  python and for yplot.  I'm able to reproduce the example
> 7 for given implementions of plplot-5.6.1. I'm in puzzle why in 5.6.1 some of
> chars  does not work when I call them in pllab
>
> best regards
> Valery

Hi Valery:

I get a slightly different result with the CVS version of PLplot: #(2229)
(vertical bar) works okay, but #(2053) (italic upper case C) does not.

To solve the problem I suggest you use -drvopt text=0 which enforces Hershey
fonts in all cases.  That option is what you want to reproduce legacy plots
exactly.

The fundamental issue is that the Adobe Type 1 fonts are not as complete as
the Hershey fonts. To get pure Hershey fonts (as in 5.3.1) use the option
-drvopt text=0. To get pure Adobe type 1 fonts in all cases (both symbols
and text) use -drvopt hrshsym=0. If you use that option for example 7, you
will see just how many glyphs are missing for the Adobe fonts. The default
is -drvopt text=1 (Adobe fonts for text) and -drvopt hrshsym=1 (Hershey
fonts for symbols) which is why example 7 looks okay by default, but text as
in your example above may be missing some glyphs.  Typically, symbols are
used to label points in plots so we provided hrshsym=1 by default so that at
least those symbols would be complete (although ugly).  For text as in
labels, however, Adobe type 1 fonts are the default since the results
normally look a lot better than the ugly Hershey fonts (unless a glyph is
missing for the Adobe font).

For new plots I suggest you abandon -dev psc and use -dev psttfc instead.
You then are allowed to specify the labels and symbols with either UTF8
strings or else the #[nnn] notation mixed in with FCI's #<0x8nnnnnnn> to
change fonts in mid-string (see
http://plplot.sourceforge.net/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.6.1/characters.html).
This gives you a completely flexible way to specify the labels and symbols
that you want in the fonts (e.g., upright or italic) that you want.  The
other advantage of -dev psttfc is it uses TrueType fonts which tend to be
much more complete than either Hershey or Adobe type 1 fonts.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

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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Linux-powered Science
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