Some problems with rendering db -> PDF

[Marc Baaden <baaden@smplinux.de>]

Hi,

I am currently finishing a scientific report that I have written
in docbook+refdb. There are some points that I could not yet
work out, so any help is appreciated:

Infos: docbook 4, refdb, xsltproc+XEP toolchain
       xml written in iso-8851, french language

1) In the titles (chapter/section) of the resulting PDF, the hyphenation
   character does not appear. Eg the "-" is missing, whereas the words
   are correctly separated

2) Same thing for greek characters in the title (eg beta). They are
   missing. In the actual paragraphs these are correctly reproduced.
   So 1) and 2) seem title-specific.

3) Font problem: although visually with xpdf and acrobat the PDFs
   are ok, printing yields weird characters and lots of spaces.
   Transforming with pdftops and printing the ps works fine.
   Maybe an XEp configuration problem ??

4) I use superscript for things like La3+. The outcome is currently
   very ugly. The fontsize of the 3+ is too big and it is also
   positioned quite high. This makes appear large white spaces between
   the lines before and containing the superscript.
   Any tips for improving this ?
   (I think of eg scientific articles, where the same linespacing is
   maintained even with super/subscripts)

5) Euro symbol : how to include the euro symbol in a docbook document ?
   is there an entity for it, or should one just (assuming I'd write
   in utf-8) paste it in unicode ?

6) Less urgent, what is the recommended way for checking spelling
   (note: I am writing a French document, so I need a french dictionary).
   Is this typically something that should be left for the editor
   (Emacs in my case) or are there other recommended ways ?

Thanks in advance,
  Marc Baaden

-- 
 Dr. Marc Baaden  - Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Paris
 mailto:baaden@smplinux.de      -      http://www.marc-baaden.de
 FAX: +49 697912 39550  -  Tel: +33 15841 5176 ou +33 609 843217