Graph doesn't display "en dash" correctly

[Daniel Feenberg]

One of my users reports that when he runs on his Windows machine, the do-file generates a graph that correctly displays the "en dash" but that when he runs on our Linux server the "en dash" is displayed as a question mark ("?"). The output is going to a PDF. His test program is below, I am mystified by the ??? but perhaps it has meaning, since he says the program works in Windows. Is there a better way to specify the character that will work in both environments?

* Set font to serif "Times New Roman"
graph set window fontface "Times New Roman"

* en dash (???)
local endash "???"

clear
set obs 2
gen x = _n
gen y = _n
twoway scatter y x, title("`c(os)': this is an en-dash: `endash'")
gr export "serif_symbol_`c(os)'.pdf", replace

[Scott Merryman]

Would this wor:

local endash = ustrunescape("\u2013")
dis "`endash'"
clear
set obs 2
gen x = _n
gen y = _n
twoway scatter y x, title("`c(os)': this is an en-dash: `endash'")

[Daniel Feenberg]

User reports

Thanks, but that link didn't help. Interestingly, unicode characters display properly in my putty
shell, just not in graph output

.

[Ian Timaeus]

I am also mystified by the ??? which appeared as ??? in my graph when I experimented on my Windows machine. Under Windows, at least, if you paste an en-dash created elsewhere (e.g. in Word) into a do file, it renders correctly in both the resulting Stata graph and an exported pdf (Using the Unicode character does too, but is less concise and isn't wysiwyg).