[Pkg-octave-devel] Wrong octave/gnuplot plot output

[Mike Miller]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Marco Mattiolo wrote:
> Il 25/07/2012 14:31, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso ha scritto:
>
>> If you want this to work for gnuplot, looks to me like you have to file a
>> bug with the ghostscript package to use a different default font.
>
>
> This was my first question
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-octave-devel/2012-July/009533.html
>
> I'm having some trouble with plotting in Octave on Wheezy, and cannot
> understand which package (octave, gnuplot, or one of their dependencies)
> is to blame.
>
>
> So thank you for answering it: ghostscript has changed the default font
> in octave+gnuplot upgrade from squeeze to wheezy.

Not quite. Octave changed the way it specifies what "default font"
means to the gnuplot backend, namely from specifying a default of ""
to the string "{}". Refer to the bug report leading to that change
[1], there was a good reason for it. IIRC what this ends up doing is
making ghostscript now choose the default font rather than gnuplot.
This is why Jordi points out it is ghostscript's default font that you
have a problem with.

If you generate an eps file instead of png you can compare the font
selection directly in the files, you will see the difference. Added
bonus, this takes ghostscript out of the equation.

Also, go back to your squeeze system, try explictly setting your font
name to "{}" or "NotARealFont" in Octave on your squeeze setup, and
see what your resulting plots on screen and in png output look like. I
bet you'll see the same as on wheezy.

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?32118

-- 
mike