unicode&pdf font problem RESOLVED

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:17:04 +0100 (CET)
From: tdenes at cogpsyphy.hu
To: David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] unicode&pdf font problem RESOLVED


Dear David,

Thank you for your efforts. Inspired by your remarks, I started a new
google-search and found this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3434349/sweave-not-printing-localized-characters

SO HERE COMES THE SOLUTION (it works on both OSs):

pdf.options(encoding = "CP1250")
pdf()
plot(1,type="n")
text(1,1,"\U0171")
dev.off()

CP1250 should work for all Central-European languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1250


Thank you again,
 Denes

On Jan 13, 2011, at 7:01 AM, tdenes at cogpsyphy.hu wrote:

Hi!

Sorry for the missing specs, here they are:

version

              _
platform       i386-pc-mingw32
arch           i386
os             mingw32
system         i386, mingw32
status
major          2
minor          12.1
year           2010
month          12
day            16
svn rev        53855
language       R
version.string R version 2.12.1 (2010-12-16)

OS: Windows 7 (English version, 32 bit)

You are after what Adobe calls: udblacute; 0171.  It is recognized in
the list of adobe glyphs:

 str(tools::Adobe_glyphs[371, ])

'data.frame':	1 obs. of  2 variables:
  $ adobe  : chr "udblacute"
  $ unicode: chr "0171"

Consulted the help pages
points {graphics}
postscript {grDevices}
pdf {grDevices}
charsets {tools}
postscriptFonts {grDevices}

I have tried a variety of the pdfFonts installed on my Mac without
success. You can perhaps make a list of fonts on your machines with
names(pdfFonts()). Perhaps the range of fonts and the glyphs they
contain is different on your machines. I get consistently warning
messages saying there is a conversion failure:

pdf("trial.pdf", family="Helvetica")

# also tried with font="Helvetica" but I think that is erroneous

plot(1,type="n")
text(1,1,"print \U0170\U0171")

Warning messages:
1: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <c5>
2: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <b0>
3: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <c5>
4: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <b1>
5: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   font metrics unknown for Unicode character U+0170
6: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   font metrics unknown for Unicode character U+0171
7: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <c5>
8: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <b0>
9: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <c5>
10: In text.default(1, 1, "print ????") :
   conversion failure on 'print ????' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted
for <b1>

And this is despite my system saying the \U0170 and \U0171 are present
in the Helvetica font. Also tried family=URWHelvetica and
family=NimbusSanand and a bunch of others without success, but my last
best hope after reading the material in help(postscript) in the
"Families" section had been NimbusSan.  There is also information on
that page regarding encodings that appears to be very machine specific.

Note that \U0171 != ??. See
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/171/index.htm
Anyway, I have no problem with ű (~u") and other special
Hungarian
characters in my R-Gui. It is correctly displayed in the console, in
plots, etc. The problem is with the pdf conversion.

The same holds for my Ubuntu Hardy Heron system*, with exactly the
same
error messages as reported in an earlier thread
http://www.mail-archive.com/r-help at r-project.org/msg89792.html
As far as I know, Hershey fonts do not contain \U0171.


Regards,
Denes

* The specs of Ubuntu:

version

              _
platform       x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
arch           x86_64
os             linux-gnu
system         x86_64, linux-gnu
status
major          2
minor          12.0
year           2010
month          10
day            15
svn rev        53317
language       R
version.string R version 2.12.0 (2010-10-15)

On Jan 12, 2011, at 11:11 PM, tdenes at cogpsyphy.hu wrote:

Dear List,

I would like to print a plot into pdf. The problem is that the
character
\U0171 is replaced by a simple 'u' (i.e. without accents) in the pdf
file.

Example:
# this works fine
plot(1,type="n")
text(1,1,"print \U0171")

# this fails
pdf("trial.pdf")
plot(1,type="n")
text(1,1,"print \U0171")
dev.off()

Have you tried:

pdf("trial.pdf")
plot(1,type="n")
text(1,1,"print ??")
dev.off()

Your default screen fonts may not be the same as your default pdf
fonts. A lot depends on system specifics, none of which have you
provided.

I found an earlier post at
http://www.mail-archive.com/r-help at r-project.org/msg65541.html, but
it is
too hard to understand at my R-level. Any help is appreciated.

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT