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Re: lost Greek letters in graphics (EPS files)

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg8957] Re: lost Greek letters in graphics (EPS files)
  • From: "P.J. Hinton" <paulh>
  • Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 01:59:25 -0400
  • Organization: Wolfram Research, Inc.
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Paul Slater wrote:

> Although when I make some plots and use Greek letters
> for labelling axes, when I attempt to save the plot
> using the Display command in an EPS file, the Greek
> letter is changed when I read the file with ghostview
> or xdvi.
> 
> I'm sure that there's a simple explanation and remedy,
> I just can't figure it out from the manual,...
> 
> Eventually I hope to export the graphics so others can
> examine it (with the proper Greek lettering).

The problem you are encountering is rooted in the fact that Mathematica
uses a collection of fonts to do typesetting that are not (by default)
available to your PostScript-rendering software.
The fonts are used to typeset mathematical symbols as well as Greek
letters.  Many users (mistakenly) assume that Greek letters are drawn
using the Symbol font.  I think it's using a variant of the Math1 font.

The EPS file created by evaluating Display contains requests for 
fonts, but it does not include information on how to draw the
Mathematica fonts.  You can make your PostScript interpreter aware of
these fonts by reviewing the documentation for the interpreter.

If you are using Ghostscript or a viewer that employs Ghostscript (like
GhostView and xdvi), then you will need to either edit Ghostscript's
"Fontmap" file (good if you are a sysadmin and want to make this
available to all users on the system) or you will need to define an
environment variable GSFONTPATH to tell Ghostscript where to find the
Type 1 versions of the Mathematica fonts (good if you are just a regular
user on this system and can't edit Fontmap).  See the Ghostscript README
files for more information.  I have template Fontmap files for doing
this under Linux and Windows 95 that I can supply at your request.

This will affect you when you try to print a PostScript file with these
fonts as well.  The Technical Support department at Wolfram Research has
put together an extensive explanation of how to make PostScript printers
aware of the Mathematica fonts.  See URL's

http://www.wolfram.com/support/FrontEnds/Printing/FontsInGraph.html

--
P.J. Hinton	
Mathematica Programming Group           paulh at wolfram.com
Wolfram Research, Inc.                  http://www.wolfram.com/~paulh/


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