June 22nd, 2010 | 6 Comments

If you use the postscript terminal and have a greek letter e.g. Φ for the xlabel, it should be italic because it is a variable.
To get the greek letter you have to use the enhanced mode of the terminal and can write

set xlabel '{/Symbol P}'

But this produces a non italic Φ and it is not obvious how to get it italic. For normal letters the following will work

set xlabel '{/Helvetica-Italic P}'

and produces a P. But for the Symbol font Italic is not the right notation, instead you have to use Oblique:

set xlabel '{/Symbol-Oblique P}'

This will finally generate our desired italic Φ.

Update: in the meantime I have learned Helvetica-Italic is not part of the official postscript core fonts. Hence, use also Helvetica-Oblique.