XFIG - facility for interactive generation of figures under X11

Xfig and Latin-2 Characters

Usally, we can use Latin-1 characters on xfig without any special settings, but some people in the world may want to use another characters.

Do you want to use Latin-2 characters on xfig? OK. You can probably use internationalization facility to enable it, as described below.

Latin-2 Characters on Xfig

To use Latin-2 (or other Latin-n) characters on xfig 3.2.3, you must compile xfig and fig2dev with I18N facility enabled. See Internationalization for details.

You should then put following lines to app-defaults file:

    Fig.international: true
    Fig.inputStyle: Root
    Fig.eucEncoding: false
    !Fig.latinKeyboard: true

You may or may not want to remove ``!'' at the lastest line.

And then, set LANG environment variable to the desired locale (czech, for example) and start xfig, then select Times-Roman or Times-Bold on TEXT FONT and enter text from keyboard. If everything was OK, you may enter locale specific characters here, using localized keyboard and/or ``dead keys''.

Export in PostScript

To export figure with Latin-n characters in PostScript, PostScript header file (used by fig2dev) for the language is required.

PostScript header file for Czech (czech.ps) is contributed from Ales Horak, and I believe it should work for any Latin-2 languages such as Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, etc. If you want use Latin-2 languages, you should get czech.ps, and put it as locale.ps (locale is locale name you use) in the directory specified with FIG2DEV_LIBDIR when installing fig2dev (you should find some files such as ja_JP.eucJP.ps in the directory).

If everything was OK, you may export figure with Latin-2 characters and print it to PostScript printer, or process the PostScript file with GhostScript. Special fonts are not required to process the PostScript file, because czech.ps generate Latin-2 fonts from general Times-Roman and Times-Bold fonts.

PostScript header file for other Latin-n languages (n = 3, 4, ...) is not prepared at this time. Contribution is strongly expected.

Notes

Latin-n fonts must be available on your X server, of cause. You may need to set Fig.normalFontSet and Fig.boldFontSet so that appropriate fonts can be selected.
Your X server may need to support localized keyboard and/or ``dead keys'' to input exotic characters.
Latin-n characters can be used only when Times-Roman or Times-Bold is selected as TEXT FONT.
Usally, Latin-n characters can't be edited on Edit panel. However, text can be edited on the canvas of xfig, by simply click the text on the canvas while TEXT mode in the drawing mode panel is selected.
For redhat Linux 6.x, RPMS prepared by Ales Horak may be found at: ftp://charon.fi.muni.cz//pub/redhat-mycontrib/rh-6.x/RPMS/i386/, files transfig-3.2.3-3.i386.rpm and xfig-3.2.3-3.i386.rpm.

by T.Sato, 2000/1/28, 1/30

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