Bullet characters in anchored text frames have wonky text encoding when exported to EPS

[chrispitude]

I'm converting FrameMaker anchored-frame figures to SVG using the EPS-to-SVG conversion path described here:

How can I save anchored frames as SVG during XML export? 

However, I've run into an issue with the EPS exported by FrameMaker 2017.

In an anchored text frame, the user has inserted a bullet character using the Insert > Symbols > Bullet. In FrameMaker, the text string is "•text" with a leading bullet. This text string is written to the EPS file as follows:

0 To
1.0000 0.0000 0.0000 1.0000 168.7293 78.9848 0 Tp
TP
/_Helvetica-Bold 18.0000 Tf
0.0000 Tc
 0 Tr
  0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000 k
(\202\304\242text) Tx
TO
  0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000 K

The bullet character is represented by the "\202\304\242" octal byte sequence in the EPS. This corresponds to "0x82 0xC4 0xA2" in hex. I have not been able to map this back to any sensible encoded character. It renders as "random" junk characters in every EPS viewer or converter I've tried.
The Adobe FrameMaker Structure Application Developer's Guide says that EPSB, EPSD, and EPSI are valid export formats. However, none of those format strings are accepted; only "EPS" is. And I haven't found a way to control the text encoding used for text strings inside exported EPS files.

Has anyone figured out how to handle special characters properly in EPS export from FrameMaker?

Thanks in advance!

 - Chris

[Bob_Niland]

FYI, in FM2019, saving as PDF, and converting to SVG in Illustrator (10.0.3), the bullet is an actual •, and not octal-encoded UTF-8.

[chrispitude]

Thanks Bob! Are you saving just the frame contents as PDF, or the entire FrameMaker document?

[Bob_Niland]

The entire document, but it was a one-page test file.

[chrispitude · Accepted solution]

I was able to write a Perl script to fix these encodings:

https://github.com/chrispy-snps/fm-fix-eps-export-characters