From: Henning T. <pl...@he...> - 2005-10-07 15:37:24
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I like to generate several plots in Postscript format for inclusion in a LaTeX document. I have problems to produce predictable results, e.g. I like a constant character size, constant line width and an appropriate size of plots. E.g. in one case I have a single plot, in another case I have several plots in a stack (using plssub(1,n)). Of course more plots shall consume more space. But using the defaults PLplot tries to fits everything in a page with about 2:3 aspect ratio. In LaTeX I have to include them with different values for the "scale" option of \includegraphics, resulting in different line widths. If I even change the page aspect with plsdidev or plsdiplt then the characters are distorted. Another problem I have not solved so far: If several plots are stacked the vertical spaces between subplots are quite large. Eventually I could not find commands in the documentation, or even a suggested sequence of commands to be performed to get consistent results. How to achieve that? |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2005-10-07 17:17:52
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On 2005-10-07 17:36+0200 Henning Thielemann wrote: > > I like to generate several plots in Postscript format for inclusion in a > LaTeX document. I have problems to produce predictable results, e.g. I > like a constant character size, constant line width and an appropriate > size of plots. E.g. in one case I have a single plot, in another case I > have several plots in a stack (using plssub(1,n)). Of course more plots > shall consume more space. But using the defaults PLplot tries to fits > everything in a page with about 2:3 aspect ratio. In LaTeX I have to > include them with different values for the "scale" option of > \includegraphics, resulting in different line widths. If I even change the > page aspect with plsdidev or plsdiplt then the characters are distorted. > Another problem I have not solved so far: If several plots are stacked the > vertical spaces between subplots are quite large. > Eventually I could not find commands in the documentation, or even a > suggested sequence of commands to be performed to get consistent results. > How to achieve that? I stack plots (vertically and horizontally with arbitrary spacing between them including zero space) using the plvpor command. http://plplot.sourceforge.net/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.5.3/plvpor.html . Instead of fiddling with sub-pages, I use plvpor on a single page. For typical results, see freeeos.sf.net/coulomb.pdf. Also, I use the -portrait option for postscript plots to preserve character aspect ratios for rotation from the default postscript landscape mode to portrait mode. 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). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Henning T. <pl...@he...> - 2005-10-07 18:33:35
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On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Alan W. Irwin wrote: > I stack plots (vertically and horizontally with arbitrary spacing between > them including zero space) using the plvpor command. > http://plplot.sourceforge.net/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.5.3/plvpor.html . It is certainly worth to add a hint about this alternative to plssub. I thought that after successfully dividing the page it shouldn't be problem to adjust spacing or other layout features. > Instead of fiddling with sub-pages, I use plvpor on a single page. 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. |
From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2005-10-07 22:29:22
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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). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |
From: Henning T. <pl...@he...> - 2005-10-08 12:34:07
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On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Alan W. Irwin wrote: > 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. Thanks for the detailed answer! Maybe the problem is due to my installation. I remember I use the latest RPM package which is no longer up to date. I still could not find a command for setting the page size. I have plgspa for getting the size of the page and I'm missing the corresponding plsspa. Also I found that plschr only alters the size of the text labels but not of the tick numbers. Very strange things ... |