solar mass symbol

[Steve Bickerton]

Hi All,

I'm trying to use a label for a solar mass (an M with a subscript
circle with a dot in the middle) ... seen as \odot in latex. So i need
a symbol for \odot. I'd like to do this for eps postscript output, and
i'd rather avoid using the latex-based terminals. I wrote a script to
print out the characters in the /Symbol font

So, a gazillion lines labels like:

loop over i
set label i "i: {/Symbol \i}" at xi,yi

... and it makes a nice plot showing all the symbols in that font ...
many very useful ... but not latex's \odot

Does anyone know of a font that includes it? ... or a hack to make one?
... also, an \hbar might come in handy too!

cheers,
steve

[hh]

"Steve Bickerton" <bi...@physics.mcmaster.ca> wrote in message
news:dv1mjv$gbu$1...@informer1.cis.mcmaster.ca...

If you don't mind running your plot through another LaTeX step, you can use
the psfrag package to insert special LaTeX symbols into your postscript
output. Just create a single-page LaTeX document (\pagestyle{empty}) that
contains nothing but your eps plot and use psfrag to add special symbols.
Convert the resulting LaTeX dvi file first to postscript and then to eps
using Gsview. Sounds more roundabout than it really is. I do it all the time
and it works nicely since it puts the whole power of LaTeX at your disposal
to beautify your plots.

By the way, defining the command
\newcommand*{\xymove}[3]{\makebox[0pt][l]{\mbox{}\hspace{#1}\raisebox{#2}[0pt][0pt]{#3}}}
allows you to finetune placement of your symbols, i.e., using
\xymove{x}{y}{symbol}
inside the argument of the \psfrag command will place 'symbol' at position
(x,y) relative to the present position. Logically, this command has zero
width and height, so you can use several of them in the same argument (as
long as you comment out trailing space).

Hope this helps.

--hh

[Juergen Wieferink]

Steve Bickerton wrote:
> I'm trying to use a label for a solar mass (an M with a subscript
> circle with a dot in the middle) ... seen as \odot in latex. So i need
> a symbol for \odot. I'd like to do this for eps postscript output, and
> i'd rather avoid using the latex-based terminals. I wrote a script to
> print out the characters in the /Symbol font

Googling the newsnet (google groups) for "solar mass symbol gnuplot"
gave the following:

Peter Weilbacher gives a enhanced code (untested):

M_{{/=12 O}&{/*-.66 O}{/=12 \267}} yr^{-1}

Giulio Bottazzi gives another way using the latex fonts:

gnuplot> set terminal postscript enhanced eps fontfile 'cmsy10.pfb'
gnuplot> set label 1 "{/CMSY10 \014}" at 0,0
gnuplot> set out "test.eps"
gnuplot> plot x
gnuplot> set out

Juergen