Re: 3.6.1 produces eps files that are unusable on Debian wheezy

[Mike Miller]

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 12:58 AM, Daniel J Sebald <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 03/03/2012 10:09 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 10:57 PM, Dmitri A. Sergatskov
>> <address@hidden>  wrote:
>>>
>>> BTW, the problem with "{}" exist with the original doc files in octave
>>> tar ball.
>>> E.g. in doc/interpreter
>>> gs mesh.eps
>
> [snip]
>
>>>>> showpage, press<return>  to continue<<
>>>
>>>
>>> I am not sure if we should consider this a bug.
>>
>>
>> Thanks for finding that, at least it's consistent.  I'm still not
>> convinced whether the problem is with octave, gnuplot, or gs.  I'll
>> poke around some more.
>
> I consider it a bug somewhere along the way.  The root issue might be
> confusion arising from gnuplot's dual method of specifying fonts, but I
> believe it is Octave where the simplest fix is.  If there is an issue with
> gnuplot inconsistencies, let me know; I'll argue that gnuplot should have
> font specification consistency.
>
> Mike, have you tried adding this line to your startup scripts?
>
>
> set(0, 'defaultaxesfontname', 'Helvetica')

That works once I have octave built and installed, but doesn't help
when running with -f, such as in building the doc directory.  Your
other suggestion to use a single space as the font name gave the same
error.

I have found a resolution for why my ghostscript is failing with the
same file that works for everyone else.  Here is the gs command that
finally works for me with the original eps files:

gs -sDEVICE=x11 -dNONATIVEFONTMAP <file>

I used the -dDEBUG switch and it seems like ghostscript is possibly
failing on my system because of too many installed fonts.  It keeps
printing one font name after another until I see the same "/limitcheck
in /findfont" message.  It never gets through all the available fonts
to get to the part where you guys are seeing "Substituting font
Courier for {}."

To me it seems like gnuplot is working correctly, I'd still like to
know the reason for the "{}" font name in octave in the first place,
but the real problem for me is back to ghostscript.  If someone sent
me a postscript file using a font that I don't have, I would get the
same error.

Thanks for the help... still can't build from hg because of this though :)

-- 
mike