plot issues

[Petr Mikulik]

> > > >printing to pdfcairo
> > > >
> > > >plot(1:100)
> > > >print -dpdf z.pdf
> > > >print -dpdfcairo zz.pdf
> > > >
> > > >... the output file is called pdfcairo:zz.pdf
> > >
> > >This behavior is intended.
> >
> >This will certainly *not* work under windows, since the colon is not a valid
> >filename character. It actually designates the streams associated with a
> >file. So it might not issue an error (haven't checked) but then very subtly
> >misbehave.
> >
> >This should be fixed.
> >
> >benjamin
> 
> 
> Recently this behavior was removed. Octave had been using "convert" (from
> imagemagick) to produce alternative formats. This is now done using
> ghostscript. Specifically, when a terminal is specified that is not
> supported/recognized, it is assumed that ghostcript is to be used to convert
> to the specified format. As the cairo terminals are not explicitly supported,
> specifying -pdfcairo produces a ghostscript error when using the developers
> sources.
> 
> The pdfcairo and pngcairo terminals could be supported, but are not supported
> at this time.
> 
> Petr, what are the benefits of the pdfcairo and pngcairo terminals over the
> pdf and png terminals?

Usually the (original) pdf terminal is not compiled in because of license 
issues. pdfcairo and pngcairo are automatically compiled in if the system 
has cairo library (available as a package for most linux distributions, for 
example).

I think that the cairo terminals handle UTF-8 text correctly.

I gave cc: to gnuplot list so that somebody can explain the difference in 
more details.

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PM