unicode&pdf font problem

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