updated version of the PS backend

Hello, I did some clean-up of the matplotlib PostScript

    > backend. Main changes:

    > - The generated Postscript output is now completely DSC
    > conformant (I hope).

Great - everyone should take this for a test drive with their favorite
PS viewers before the next release.

    > - All PostScript definitions go into a a PostScript
    > dictionary mpldict instead of the global one. This will
    > hopefully prevent problems (name clashes) when including
    > matplotlib generated eps files into other PostScript files

    > - I moved 1.5kb of comments about drawing ellipses from
    > the generated PostScript into a Python source code
    > comment. I think it does not make sense to ship the
    > comment in each and every genereated picture.

Makes sense to me...

    > Hopefully I did not cause any new problems. Comments
    > about the changes are most welcome.

One other PS quasi-bug you may want to be aware of is the way truetype
fonts are embedded. The basic problem is that Paul couldn't find a
way to access the individual glyph information so ended up having to
embed the entire font. For mathtext, with multiple fonts (which is
typical) this makes for large ps files. It would be nice to just
embed only the required glyphs. I believe this information is may be
available in face->glyph->outline - see also FT_Outline in the
freetype API abd agg22/font_freetype/agg_font_freetype.cpp which makes
use of this glyph info in decompose_ft_outline.

I haven't looked into this extensively, but I think it should be
possible. This would help on mathtext for SVG, for which I believe we
require the individual glyph information.

JDH

Hello John,

···

On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 10:54:04AM -0600, John Hunter wrote:

One other PS quasi-bug you may want to be aware of is the way truetype
fonts are embedded. The basic problem is that Paul couldn't find a
way to access the individual glyph information so ended up having to
embed the entire font. ...

Yes, I know about this. Let's see whether I can do anything ...

It would also be nice if I could find a way to use the printer's built-in
fonts if the user wants to. This should lead to really small PostScript
files and really high quality printed glyphs.

All the best,
Jochen
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