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How to get greek letter beta in gnuplot?

I need to insert greek letter Beta into YLabel of my plot. I am using ubuntu version 18.04 and gnuplot version 5.2.
Based on the suggestions provided in How do I include greek letter in gnuplot?, I tried the following commands.
set encoding iso_8859_1
set terminal jpeg large font 'arial,20' size 800,750
set termoption enhanced
set xlabel "{/=24 {/Arial:Bold S195/CB-H57/CB distance} ({\305})}"
set ylabel "{/=24 {/Arial:Bold D102/CB-H57/C{/Symbol b} distance} ({\305})}" enhanced

But I am not getting Beta symbol in the output file. Instead blank empty rectangle is displayed.

Solution

  • The generic answer to any question "How do I use character <whatever> in gnuplot?" is set encoding utf8. See the FAQ.

    In particular:

    1. Do not use PostScript constructs like {/Symbol b} or {\305} if you are not creating PostScript output. The special Adobe Symbol font is a PostScript-only work around from the 1980s.

    2. You have explicitly set the encoding to iso-8859-1, which does not include any Greek letters. Do not do that.

    Your ylabel command should look like this:

    set encoding utf8
... other commands ...
set ylabel "{/Arial:Bold=24 D102/CB-H57/Cβ distance (⊕)}"