Re: Use of system fonts?

[Mark Verschell <markverschell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I actually do this in LaTeX - I have used Illustrator - but it is 
expensive and not designed for batch work.

With LaTeX, I use an add-on package called PSTricks. The procedure is 
pretty simple then.  First I output in postscript with no labels and, if 
necessary, no axes - I also use a long identifiable title to make sure I 
remember what each plot is. (I usually output a version that I save or 
print that does have all the labels and axes). Also, I make sure that 
all the plots have identical dimensions - usually by being explicit 
about window and axis dimensions. Then I can play around with a single 
plot using PSTricks inside of LaTeX which allows me to both include the 
EPS graphic in a specified graphic window, and easily add labels, axes, 
and any other desired graphic. With practice you can make a LaTeX macro 
that applies to all similar graphics that makes this very automated. An 
example from one paper is:

\DepthGraphic{temp160E_0_1000m_annual.ps}{160E}{Annual}{{cold run}{warm 
run}{control}}

Once the first one is done - maybe a 1/2 hours worth of work - I can 
make as many similar additions to the graphics that I want - and of 
course I save the macros as they will usually be pretty close to what I 
want in the future.

I do my whole paper in LaTeX, but you can easily just do the graphics 
and output each one as an eps file for inclusion into your favorite word 
processor. The best part is that LaTeX and PSTricks are free. I 
recommend an all inclusive package called teTeX which is available at 
http://www.tug.org/teTeX/ and is available for many-many systems 
(sources are also available but shouldn't be necessary - they even have 
a Mac OS X version!)

Mark


On Wednesday, April 17, 2002, at 12:38 PM, Ansley Manke wrote:

> Hi Jean-Marie,
> Thank you for your ideas.  It would be wonderful to be able to get
> into the postscript directly and work with labels, or have some special
> options like you describe.   But, Ferret does all graphics output 
> through its
> version of PPLUS, which draws the fonts as graphics primitives using
> GKS graphics calls.  Ferret does not directly write postscript in any of
> its modes, including the -batch mode.  So I think Billy's suggestions 
> are
> where we stand.
>
> Ansley
>
> Jean-Marie Beckers wrote:
>
> > Adding just a few additional strings on an EPS file is not a problem; I
> > was really more interested in having a way to ged rid of ALL drawn
> > letters, including labels etc and to have them as hardware caracters
> >
> > I'm not a Ferret/PPL expert so the lines of action I can think are the
> > following:
> >
> > One could add into the font table an additional font @HW (hardware 
> > font)
> > which is just the copy of the default font.
> > The @HW "command"  when USING fonts could then be used as a FLAG 
> > setting
> > which could be used at the lowest level routine that plots characters
> > to replace its standart way of plotting caracters by a suitable
> > piece of postscript or other replacement code.
> >
> > The problem is that if ferret ALWAYS gets through a metafile (does
> > -batch
> > simple chain the operations or does it directly produce postscript ??)
> > then these postscript commands should be made "special commands"
> > understood and treated
> > differently by Fprint.
> >
> > This would only work when producing postscript and the user should not
> > use
> > @HW when plotting in X.
> >
> > If the intermediate Metafile accepts "comments" in it, another
> > possibility would simply to add before and after each caracter to be
> > plotted a specific comment that can be interpreted by Fprint so that it
> > can replace the
> > drawing sequence between these two comments by a postscript call to a
> > text placement. This approach would then also work on X.
> >
> > This would ask for recoding and a new compilation, probably only
> > possible
> > for someone used to the code ?
> >
> > Billy Kessler a écrit :
> > > One solution is to convert postscript out of ferret into
> > > encapsulated postscript (eps) files, then bring the postscript
> > > in to a word processor (e.g. WOrdPerfect), and add whatever
> > > titles, captions, etc are needed. I do this frequently.
> > >
> > > Conversion to eps can be done with the unix shell script
> > > ps2epsi (part of the ghostscript freeware package). The change
> > > is small, just adding the "bounding box" statement.
> > >
> > > THe word processor treatment is not suitable for axis or
> > > contour labels and other small things, but I routinely make
> > > ferret postscript with no titles, then add titles and a
> > > caption in WordPerfect.
> > >
> > > One hint if you are doing this is to use Fprint -p portrait
> > > if the page you will be putting the graphic on is in portrait
> > > orientation. Wordperfect allows rotation but it is easier to
> > > get the size and spacing right if the ferret postscript is
> > > already that way.
> > >
> > > Billy K
> > >
> > > On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Olivier Marti wrote:
> > >
> > > > Le 16/04/02 20:02, « Ansley Manke » <ansley@pmel.noaa.gov> a écrit :
> > > >
> > > > > Hello Jean-Marie,
> > > > > There is not a way to change to system fonts within Ferret or
> > > > > the postprocessing done by Fprint.  Possibly the best solution is
> > > > > to use a graphics tool such as Illustrator.   Has anyone done this?
> > > > >
> > > > > It sounds as if you have some ideas; if you work out methods of
> > > > > customizing your plots, please post them to the Users' group.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ansley Manke
> > > > I've already tried to edit Ferret PostScript with Adobe Illustrator, 
> > > > and I
> > > > was very disapointed. Ferret does not include any character in the 
> > > > graphic
> > > > file. Instead, all characters are emulated through graphic 
> > > > primitives.
> > > > Editing the PostScript means removing all emulated 'characters' to 
> > > > replace
> > > > them by actual ones. This is a real pain.
> > > >
> > > > This comes from the metafile generated by Ferret, and thus cannot be 
> > > > change
> > > > by a smarter version of Fprint.
> > > >
> > > > Olivier
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > / Olivier MARTI                mailto:olivier.marti@cea.fr \
> > > > | Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement |
> > > > | Tel: +33 1 69 08 77 27            Fax: +33 1 69 08 77 16 |
> > > > \                     <http://www.ipsl.jussieu.fr/~omamce> /