On 2007-12-01 08:58-0000 Andrew Ross wrote: > Alan, I can confirm that the special definefont line ">> definefont" > does not appear in my Ubuntu generated plots. I do not have access to the > debian testing plots here at home to check them I'm afraid. > > I can confirm that I did not see any errors with gv --noquiet on these > plots though. Since the cairo version we are using should be the same, > then the only difference I can see is the installed fonts.
Thanks for that confirmation of no special definefont for Ubuntu, and I agree with your conclusion about some Debian (but not Ubuntu) problem in installed fonts (or maybe even fontconfig) being the primary source of the trouble, but with the PostScript backend to cairo not responding properly to the font error. In sum, the Debian font problems are giving us an unprecedented opportunity to test little-used paths in the libcairo source code. I have now discovered the source code in libcairo where the special definefont pattern was used. That whole area has just been reworked in git due to some Type 3 font issue. I don't think I have any Type 3 fonts installed, but nevertheless, the code section is now a new special style, and the problem with the old special style may have inadvertently been fixed. My plan is to build a special libcairo with the latest git innovations in PostScript support to see if all the libcairo problems dealing with the bad font issues on Debian go away. If I get success, then this should further motivate the cairo developers to do a quick stable release this month (which they are already tentatively planning because of the xyshow one-liner). If I get failure with the new style, then perhaps Adrian Johnson can figure out a quick fix to that new special style, but we will see. Hazen, do not be discouraged by these issues with libcairo. I will do my best to make sure they are all fixed by doing cairo bug reports, agitating on the cairo list, etc. In my opinion the extremely high quality of the cairo device results make this sort of extra debugging effort worthwhile. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper from Novell. From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going mainstream. Let it simplify your IT future. http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4 _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
