Re: [Matplotlib-users] Latex, Labels and PDF

On Tuesday 24 July 2007 12:59:54 pm Peter W=FCrtz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Try getting your system set up to use the xpdf distiller, that has alwa=
ys
> > given me excellent results.
>
> Thanks alot! Using xpdf gives perfect results!
> http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/wuertz/matplotlib/xpdf_tof_spectrum_bec_500=
ns
>.eps
> http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/wuertz/matplotlib/xpdf_tof_spectrum_bec_500=
ns
>.pdf

Good. If you insert those into another latex document and create a pdf, the=
=20
text in your figure will even be searchable!

> > There have been many problems reported on this mailing list that concern
> > latex markup. Most often, people have difficulty getting usetex to work
> > because matplotlib depends on latex, dvipng, ghostscript, and optionally
> > xpdf (more precisely, xpdf's pdftops utility).
>
> The problem is, the whole plot/ps/eps/dvi/ghostscript/pdf/xpdf/distiller
> process is totally obscure to a normal user.=20

We know, but it is the best we have been able to do so far. It is a difficu=
lt=20
problem to solve. We document what we have, as best we can, at the usetex=20
wiki page, but it sometimes gets overlooked. There has been some effort to=
=20
produce a utility to parse the dvi file and use that information directly,=
=20
which would cut the external deps back to only latex.

> For example, i don't have=20
> xpdf installed... but choosing the xpdf setting gives me perfect results
> now. If I understand you correctly, I just need the "pdftops" utility
> included in "poppler-utils".

Thats right. Maybe I should change the rc keyword, which was named when=20
pdftops was part of xpdf.=20

Darren