[PyX-user] Font Issues

[Tim G. <tg...@pr...>]

I'm relatively new to PyX but it seems to be a very nice program.  I've 
been using matplotlib a lot in the past 2 years to plot the majority of my 
data/graphics, but I'm getting quite frustrated with it's font handling. 
It seems for quick plots it's great, but for anything sophisticated, I 
have to bring it in to redo all of the text elements in the appropriate 
font.

For what it's worth, I'm using pdftex, Illustrator 10, and typesetting in 
Adobe Garamond Premier (with math from the mathpazo package).

I tried out PyX and with in a very short period of time, I was able to get 
a plot to look pretty much exactly how I wanted it.  The labels are in 
Garamond Premier, I'm able to easily enter greek/math for text, and best 
of all I can have my data generation/analysis in the same script that I 
plot in; if I make a change to a data point, I don't have to open the new 
file up in Illustrator and retouch everything.

Problem: my output pdf file is 600kb.  Way to big.  The corresponding 
matplotlib eps -> epstopdf file is about 12kb.  I'm assuming this is a 
font embedding issue.  I found a little hint on the web that advises one 
to run a pdf like mine through GhostScript and convert the fonts into 
outlines (a ps file), then run it through pstopdf.  This did indeed work 
for printing and viewing, though editability in Illustrator is severely 
hampered: line weights are off, etc.

So... Is there a way that I can skip the whole ghostscript step?  Does PyX 
have a method to NOT embed the whole font?  Of course, not using my custom 
font works fine as expected (17kb file).

This whole process has been somewhat frustrating for me.  Metapost 
graphing seemed to be close to what I was looking for as far as workflow, 
but graphing in metapost seems somewhat limited.  Since I already use 
Python for scripting, PyX seems perfect for what I am looking for but this 
font thing is a bit annoying.  Hope you guys can help.

Tim