Umlauts in PostScript

Report · Aug 15, 2008

Hello everybody,

I'm now fussing around with german umlauts (eg. ä,ö,ü) in PostScript for a couple of time and still couldn't get through one of these massive documentation from Adobe and private users. I've programmed a printer-spooler for Unix that takes uses of the lpr-command. The Postscript-file is generated automatically by my programme.
Everything works perfectly apart from the umlauts which just appear as a space. I read a document that proposed hex-codes (eg "ä"="\216") but that doesn't work either.
Now, I'm not sure if I have to embed my own font to the file (how do I do that?) or if I can directly access the extendet Unicode Latin Codes.
Does anyone have experiences or documentation about that problem?
Many thanks in advance
Simon

Report · Aug 15, 2008

The code value to use is not a fixed value: it isn't as simple as
saying "use this code".

You are probably not setting the Encoding for the font you use. This
is a mistake, though you can get away with it for unaccented western
European. In all other cases you should set a known Encoding. Then you
will know what code to put in your strings.

Alternatively, in level 2 and above, you can use glyphshow.

There is absolutely no Unicode support: if you have been trying to
find that, you will not get the information you need.

Aandi Inston

Report · Aug 15, 2008

Hello Aandi Inston,

after reading the official introduction to PostScript Level 2 I decided to use glyphshow. And it works!

Thanks very much indeed for your quick help!

For everyone who is having the same problem, it goes like this:
100 100 moveto
(Let's use some umlauts: ) show /Adieresis glyphshow /Odieresis glyphshow ( it does work!) show

A basic set for the european special characters:
â /acircumflex ä /adieresis Ä /Adieresis
à /agrave ç /ccedilla Ç /Ccedilla
é /eacute É /Eacute ê /ecircumflex
ë /edieresis è /egrave € /Euro
ï /idieresis ô /ocircumflex ö /odieresis
Ö /Odieresis ß /germandbls ü /udieresis
Ü /Udieresis

Simon