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Re: Accents in Postscript

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg14193] Re: Accents in Postscript
• From: paulh (P.J. Hinton)
• Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 03:00:31 -0400
• Organization: Wolfram Research, Inc.
• References: <6uue8i$9ub@smc.vnet.net>
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

In article <6uue8i$9ub at smc.vnet.net>, you write:

|> when producing a PostScript file from a graphics cell (using Display
for |> example), I have some trouble with accentuated characters,
although |> $CharacterEncoding has the value "ISO8859-1". Has anybody
already found |> (and solved) this problem?

I suspect that the PostScript code being generated does not include
instructions to reencode the font so that eight-bit characters can be
used.  Our developers are aware of the problem and are planning to fix
it for a future release.

The workaround for this is to add a block of code to the EPS file that
defines an ISO 8859-1 reencoding function and then invoke it to create
a pseudofont (my terminology here, not Adobe's). 

Say for example, you're using Courier-Bold. The fake font would have a
name like ISOCourier-Bold.  You then run a global search-and-replace 
operation in a text editor, replacing "Courier-Bold" with 
"ISOCourier-Bold". 


You can find information that documents this as well as some code
examples at the following URLs:


1) Adobe Technical Report #5075
   Supporting Fonts in the PostScript Language Environment

http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/devrelations/PDFS/TN/5075.Fonts_In_PS.pdf

This is a useful resource because it make it clear that the application
generating the PostScript should be able to reencode the font if
accented characters are needed.  See Section 9.5 for the details.

2) comp.lang.postscript FAQ question 4.7:

http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/faq/archive/postscript.faq.part1-4.html

This pointed me to a PostScript code snippet that defined the reencoding
functions that set things right in your file.

3) Font reencoding sample: 

	ftp://wilma.cs.brown.edu/pub/postscript/ddev.ps

Shows how to get accented characters with a short sentence.  Most of the
code for a workaround can be lifted from this page and pasted right
into  an EPS file.

--
P.J. Hinton	
Mathematica Programming Group		paulh at wolfram.com Wolfram Research,
Inc.			http://www.wolfram.com/~paulh/ Disclaimer: Opinions expressed
herein are those of the author alone.