How do I convert from postscript/gnuplot to pdf maintaining accented letters for latex document?

Question

So I have to write my lab report in Italian for my lab class. In class they taught us how to use gnuplot to create graphs, so I'm using it to produce our graphs, which then I need to put in my latex document. The problem is that I have to set the label on the y axes as "velocità", and when I then save the file in ps and convert in pdf the 'à' disappears or is substituted by something else. What I've tried doing is using variations of the commands

set encoding iso_8859_1
set ylabel "velocit\340"

then I saved the plot using set term postscript color, set output "graf.ps", replot, and from the wsl terminal, using ps2pdf, I converted it into a pdf, but when I open the pdf, the letter 'à' doesn't appear anymore, even though it did show in graph previously generated by gnuplot. What should I do? In case, is there another way I can attach the original graph in my latex document?

Answer 1

Gnuplot provides several LaTeX-friendly terminal types. Postscript is not one of them. Postscript's character encodings are idiosyncratic at best. If your goal is to include gnuplot output in latex, then choose a terminal type that is designed for it. Some terminal types (e.g. cairolatex) work only with latex because they depend on latex to do all the text processing. Others (e.g. pdf, png, tikz) produce output that is fully compatible with latex but already has the text embedded in it. It is best to use UTF-8 encoding for everything, including your accented characters. For example:

set term pdf size 7cm,5cm
set output 'myfigure.pdf'
set encoding utf8

set ylabel "velocità"
set xlabel "tempo"
plot [0:10] x**2 title "velocità"

Then in your latex document, something like:

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
...
My TeX document.
\begin{figure}[h] 
\includegraphics{myfigure}
\end{figure}
...