best drawing program for use with LaTeX besides xfig
Karl Pfleger
have been a couple years since there was a thread on this (based on a quick
DejaNews search) and lots can change in two years, I'd like to solicit modern
opinions.
Like many people, I need a good drawing program to draw simple figures for
technical papers written in LaTeX. Unlike many people who seem to be content
to use xfig, I find xfig very unsatisfying and unintuitive. Its user
interface is fundamentally different from most popular drawing programs, from
MacDraw to Idraw to CorelDraw. However, there seem to be a number of
alternatives that are also free. These include:
- tgif http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/
- ipe http://www.cs.ust.hk/~otfried/Ipe/
- picasso ftp://zenon.inria.fr/pub/tk/
I'd like to see a small but informative discussion about the relative merits
of these or other capable programs in this area (that are free, and have a
non-beta version). Not a religious war, but a discussion with actual
information. For example, in an attempt to give some useful info to start off
(of course hopefully just the list a pointers above are helpful to some),
here are some of the things I've noted in looking around and talking to
people:
Picasso's version 3.8 README says that it doesn't yet have an undo
mechanism or global zoom. This seems like a good reason to eleminate this
program for my own personal tastes (others might not find these important).
Xfig is clearly the most standard. That might be important to some.
Xfig and tgif both lack the ability to do subscripted text. So if you want
text in your figures with subscripts, you have to either (a) create 2
separate text objects and just position one by hand to be to the right of
and below the other, or (b) use a LaTeX formula to do the subscript and
figure out that package's way to incorporate LaTeX processed text into the
figure. The use of LaTeX processed text seems to be incorporated into the
basic philosophy of Ipe, so perhaps it is easier to do than in xfig or
tgif, but I haven't evaluated that yet. I'd love to see opinions on how
easy this is with the respective packages.
Ipe depends on the Motif libraries, or the LessTiff free substitute, so one
of these will need to be installed first if not already present in order to
install Ipe.
All of these programs have the ability to draw and manipulate vector graphics
including all the basic shapes one normally needs.
Which drawing program do you like best and why? What are the things you find
the most annoying about the one you use most?
-Karl
(Until recently, I used to use a great program called Diagram!2 for
NEXTSTEP/Openstep from a company called Lighthouse Design, which was later
bought by Sun. It was really nice, full featured, and completely intuitive.
Plus, it could do subscripts and within-text font and style changes since it
just leveraged the OS's fine font panel.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Pfleger kpfl...@cs.stanford.edu http://www.stanford.edu/~kpfleger/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Howarth
> Every few years this seems to come up for discussion, but since it seems to
> have been a couple years since there was a thread on this (based on a quick
> DejaNews search) and lots can change in two years, I'd like to solicit modern
> opinions.
Karl,
Your timing was perfect as I was just about to post a request for the best drawing
programs to use for plotting data and then manipulating the image, ie. shading
areas, labels, etc.
I am currently using GNUPLOT for a particular application and have run up against
its limitations related to image manipulation. I tried using GIMP under LinuX but
haven't had the time to sit down a work it all out. It looks really flash and
oozes potential.
> - tgif http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/
> - ipe http://www.cs.ust.hk/~otfried/Ipe/
> - picasso ftp://zenon.inria.fr/pub/tk/
I'll give these packages a go.
Jord
--
Jordan Howarth
Ph.D. Student Ph: + 61 2 6773 3791
The Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit Fax: + 61 2 6773 3266
University of New England mailto:jhow...@metz.une.edu.au
Armidale NSW 2351 "Job 38:4"
Andreas Scherer
>
> Every few years this seems to come up for discussion, but since
> it seems to have been a couple years
> Like many people, I need a good drawing program to draw simple figures
> for technical papers written in LaTeX.
Then why not start out with PicTeX? Some very impressive results have
been created with it and it's fully integrated with your LaTeX text.
> I'd like to see a small but informative discussion about the relative
> merits of these or other capable programs in this area (that are free,
> and have a non-beta version).
Well, I don't have much time to describe the pros and cons of it, but my
absolute favorite for any type of technical drawing is MetaPost. Just to
give you a good impression of its capabilities, look at
http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/index.html
There are many examples of MetaPost programming in the PDF file
scherer-src.pdf, and other PDF documents on this page contain MetaPost
graphics as well.
MetaPost is freely available with any recent installation of "TeX and
friends" and despite its current version number of 0.6 it is absolutely
stable and reliable.
-- Andreas
Dean Neumann
> Xfig and tgif both lack the ability to do subscripted text. So if you want
> text in your figures with subscripts, you have to either (a) create 2
> separate text objects and just position one by hand to be to the right of
> and below the other, or (b) use a LaTeX formula to do the subscript and
> figure out that package's way to incorporate LaTeX processed text into the
> figure. The use of LaTeX processed text seems to be incorporated into the
> basic philosophy of Ipe, so perhaps it is easier to do than in xfig or
> tgif, but I haven't evaluated that yet. I'd love to see opinions on how
> easy this is with the respective packages.
It's easy to do in xfig using the psfrag package. This package lets you
put arbitrary "tag strings" in your figure, which are then substituted
with arbitrary LaTeX constructs when the figure is included in the
document. It would seem trivial to do subscripting this way...
\begin{figure}
\psfrag{x-sub-i}{$x_{i}$}
\includegraphics{myfig.ps}
\caption{Figure with Subscripted Text}
\end{figure}
Besides, subscripting is just a degenerate case of a more general
problem... placing text in a figure when the text is dependent on the
document itself: a section reference or page number perhaps. Psfrag
solves the general case; choosing a drawing program which has fancier
text placement capabilities does not. And psfrag is independent of the
drawing program used anyway.
Currently I use xfig, but I'd love to see a summary of responses to your
call for drawing program feedback. Perhaps there is something better
out there.
--
Dean Neumann (dneu...@neumann-associates.com)
Neumann & Associates Information Systems Inc.
Note: Remember to delete the ".delete-this-part"
portion of the address before replying.
#Chua Eng Huang, Cecil#
Karl Pfleger wrote:
<snip>
For Windows, use any drawing program you desire, and port it to PS using WMF2EPS. If you need Computer Modern fonts, the TTF ones are available from CTAN.
Scott Johnston
jhow...@metz.une.edu.au writes:
> Karl, Your timing was perfect as I was just about to post a request
> for the best drawing >programs to use for plotting data and then
> manipulating the image, ie. shading areas, labels, etc.
> I am currently using GNUPLOT for a particular application and have
> run up against its limitations related to image manipulation. I
> tried using GIMP under LinuX but haven't had the time to sit down a
> work it all out. It looks really flash and oozes potential.
ivtools' drawtool (http://www.vectaport.com/ivtools/drawtool.html) can
import directly from arbitrary Unix commands that generate
idraw-formatted PostScript or pbmplus image formats. GNU plotutils
(http://www.fsf.org/software/plotutils/plotutils.html), not to be
confused with gnuplot, can generate idraw-format Postscript. After
the plot is read in it can be manipulated and augmented with all the
editing capability of idraw, then printed in Postscript or exported
via filters that convert that PostScript to whatever's desired.
Like MetaPost, the 0.6 version number of drawtool does not necessarily
reflect on the stability of the drawing mechanisms, which are quite
mature. ivtools' drawtool is similar in capability to the original
idraw, with extensions for graphic object property lists, more
extensive multi-viewer mechanisms, and expanded export/import
mechanisms. It can also generate clickable-imagemaps for web pages.
Scott Johnston
Vectaport Inc.
http://www.vectaport.com
Juergen v. Hagen
> its limitations related to image manipulation. I tried using GIMP under LinuX but
> haven't had the time to sit down a work it all out. It looks really flash and
> oozes potential.
I think these two tools are completely unrelated:
gnuplot plots curves or data or functions
gimp is an image processing program like photoshop (only better and
free)
gnuplot can produce vector graphs (eg in PS)
gimp is (as far as I know) only bitmapped pics
For image processign (like filtering) a program smaller as gimp could
be xv.
I don't know of a nice free xwindows DRAWING tool like Coreldraw better
than xfig/tgif though, sorry.
juergen
Vincent Zoonekynd
Karl> Unlike many people who seem to be content
Karl> to use xfig, I find xfig very unsatisfying and unintuitive.
Karl> However, there seem to be a number of
Karl> alternatives that are also free. These include:
Karl> - tgif http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/
Karl> - ipe http://www.cs.ust.hk/~otfried/Ipe/
Karl> - picasso ftp://zenon.inria.fr/pub/tk/
I used to use tgif a few years ago, it much less powerful than xfig.
I do not know about picasso.
Ipe is still buggy, but more powerful than xfig :
- You may easily use LaTeX commands in the text, Ipe will invoke
LaTeX to compute the bounding box
- When you want to put a dot on a curve, it will be _exactly_ on it (I
do not think you can do that with xfig)
- You may handle ellipses and arcs of ellipses (you can't with xfig,
for it is based on the fig language, which does not know about
ellipses)
- If it doesn't do what you want, you may extend it
-- Vincent
Michael Sanders
<vonh...@engr.psu.edu> wrote:
>> I am currently using GNUPLOT for a particular application and have run up against
>> its limitations related to image manipulation. I tried using GIMP under LinuX but
>> haven't had the time to sit down a work it all out. It looks really flash and
>> oozes potential.
>
>I think these two tools are completely unrelated:
>
>gnuplot plots curves or data or functions
>gimp is an image processing program like photoshop (only better and
>free)
>
>gnuplot can produce vector graphs (eg in PS)
>gimp is (as far as I know) only bitmapped pics
>
mathematically accurate curves in fig format, and imported them into xfig for
use in a drawing.
--
(T.) Michael Sanders internet: san...@umich.edu
Physics Department URL: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sanders
University of Michigan phone: 734/936-0799
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1120 FAX: 734/764-6843
Roger A Williams
>Ipe is still buggy, but more powerful than xfig :
Its biggest weakness is poor text handling and font control, although
it's adequate if you only use it to create TeX figures. Otherwise,
GYve <ftp://ftp.aist-nara.ac.jp/pub/personal/masata-y/gyve/>, though
still alpha code, shows a lot of promise.
--
Roger Williams finger me for my PGP public key
Coelacanth Engineering consulting & turnkey product development
Norwell, MA wireless * DSP-based instrumentation * ATE
tel +1 617 871-9007 * fax +1 617 871-8363 * http://www.coelacanth.com/
--
Roger Williams finger me for my PGP public key
Coelacanth Engineering consulting & turnkey product development
Norwell, MA wireless * DSP-based instrumentation * ATE
tel +1 617 871-9007 * fax +1 617 871-8363 * http://www.coelacanth.com/
R. Mines
sco...@netcom.com (Scott Johnston) writes in part:
> jhow...@metz.une.edu.au writes:
>
> > Karl, Your timing was perfect as I was just about to post a request
> > for the best drawing >programs to use for plotting data and then
> > manipulating the image, ie. shading areas, labels, etc.
>
> > I am currently using GNUPLOT for a particular application and have
> > run up against its limitations related to image manipulation. I
> > tried using GIMP under LinuX but haven't had the time to sit down a
> > work it all out. It looks really flash and oozes potential.
If you want to manipulate data, then check out xmgr. I used this
pacakge one time to get some graphs of data for a friend. it is easy
to use and the results were nice.
If you want to draw pictures, i recommend pstricks or metapost.
Karl Pfleger
Vincent Zoonekynd <zoo...@math.jussieu.fr> wrote:
>I used to use tgif a few years ago, it much less powerful than xfig.
What can xfig do that tgif can't?
>Ipe is still buggy, but more powerful than xfig :
How buggy is it? No I'm not looking for a joke that starts out,
"it's soooo buggy that....." :-)
> - You may easily use LaTeX commands in the text, Ipe will invoke
> LaTeX to compute the bounding box
>-- Vincent
You can do this in xfig (and tgif) too. Are you saying that it is
significantly easier in ipe?
-Karl
William C. Cheng
>
>Karl> Unlike many people who seem to be content
>Karl> to use xfig, I find xfig very unsatisfying and unintuitive.
>Karl> However, there seem to be a number of
>Karl> alternatives that are also free. These include:
>
>Karl> - tgif http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/
>Karl> - ipe http://www.cs.ust.hk/~otfried/Ipe/
>Karl> - picasso ftp://zenon.inria.fr/pub/tk/
>
Could you elaborate? Thanks!
--
Bill Cheng // bill....@acm.org <URL:http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/william/>
Vincent Zoonekynd
>> Ipe is still buggy, but more powerful than xfig :
Karl> How buggy is it?
These are only minor bugs, it is as usable as xfig.
(1) The biggest trouble is compiling it. It works fine under Linux
with lesstif (lesstif is a free replacement for motif). If someone
has managed to compile it under Solaris with Motif, I am
interested.
(2) It does not work with a 16-bit display, I have to reduce the
number of colors back to 256.
(3) When working with splines, some points apprear with multiplicity,
in order to be able to draw angular curves : this multiplicity
should be one or three, it is often around 16000, which is too
much. (I have a Perl script to correct the generated files, if
someone is interrested.)
(4) The message `can't write file' appears rather often (whereas the
file has correctly been written), especially in conjunction with the
preceeding bug.
(5) I do not think that Ipe has been recently modified : these bugs
may last for a long time.
>> - You may easily use LaTeX commands in the text, Ipe will invoke
>> LaTeX to compute the bounding box
Karl> You can do this in xfig (and tgif) too. Are you saying that it is
Karl> significantly easier in ipe?
The problem you may have with xfig is the following : imagine you
have a small picture with some LaTeX text in it, but with a very long
LaTeX command that expands to something rather small. xfig will
compute the bounding box using the size of the name of the LaTeX
command, not the size of the result of the command. As a result, the
bounding box computed by xfig may be too large.
As Ipe is designed to be used with LaTeX, you do not have to save your
file once and then to export it twice, as you do with xfig : a single
file contains both PostScript and LaTeX code.
-- Vincent
William C. Cheng
Vincent Zoonekynd <zoo...@math.jussieu.fr> wrote:
>>>>>> «Karl», Karl Pfleger <kpfl...@net-gate.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>Karl> You can do this in xfig (and tgif) too. Are you saying that it is
>Karl> significantly easier in ipe?
>
>The problem you may have with xfig is the following : imagine you
>have a small picture with some LaTeX text in it, but with a very long
>LaTeX command that expands to something rather small. xfig will
>compute the bounding box using the size of the name of the LaTeX
>command, not the size of the result of the command. As a result, the
This is one advantage tgif with LaTeX Equation package has over xfig.
Tgif runs latex, dvips, and pstoepsi and import the EPSI file back into
the drawing. The LaTeX source is stored in an attribute of an object
and you can make it invisible easily. If you'd like to give tgif a
try, please get tgif-3.0-p17 and apply all 3 unofficial patches. Tgif's
home page is <URL:http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/>.
Ruben Prins
<6urh0m$a...@hpp-ss10-4.Stanford.EDU>...
>Every few years this seems to come up for discussion, but since it seems to
>DejaNews search) and lots can change in two years, I'd like to solicit
modern
>opinions.
I know TeX resides deeply burried within Unix, but I'd like to know whether
there's a convenient solution for Windows (95/NT). I know it's like cursing
in a church here, but I'd still like to know.
Thanks,
Ruben Prins
Andreas Scherer
>
> I know TeX resides deeply burried within Unix, but I'd like to know
> whether there's a convenient solution for Windows (95/NT).
-- Andreas
Maurizio Vianello
>On Thu, 01 Oct 1998 16:34:44 -0400, Juergen v. Hagen
><vonh...@engr.psu.edu> wrote:
>>> I am currently using GNUPLOT for a particular application and have run up against
>>> its limitations related to image manipulation. I tried using GIMP under LinuX but
>>> haven't had the time to sit down a work it all out. It looks really flash and
>>> oozes potential.
>>
Did anyone consider using Metapost, which is free and derived from
Metafont? I think it's a good choice...
Bye.
-------------------------------
Maurizio Vianello
Dipartimento di Matematica
Politecnico di Milano
Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32
20133 Milano, Italy
E-mail: mau...@mate.polimi.it
fax: (39) 2 23994568
Frank Boehme
> This is one advantage tgif with LaTeX Equation package has over xfig.
I agree.
> Tgif runs latex, dvips, and pstoepsi and import the EPSI file back into
> the drawing. The LaTeX source is stored in an attribute of an object
> and you can make it invisible easily.
which works pretty well for me. I use LaTeX for years and have tried a
great deal of drawing progs under different systems. I think I'll
definitely stay with tgif which, for whatever reason, is not as widely
known as it should be.
I think, when searching the net for a good drawing prog to work with
LaTeX, people easily overlook tgif because they may think it doesn't
use enough fancy stuff. It's based on raw Xlib and the mentioned
LateX equation package is packed with 'compress' (*.Z). From this,
people may conclude that they have just found something from
the early days of UNIX.
However, I found that nothing is as good as tgif - for various reasons.
But there is something which should definitely be changed (William,
haven't you some students or somebody to work for you...): the
documentation. Comes as a tremendous man page which is really hard
to read. There are things which I still don't understand. I have
to say that man tgif is one of the most cryptic output I ever managed
to get on my screen. I don't say that the page contains errors. It is
simply too complex for tgif-beginners.
regards,
Frank
--
Dr Frank Boehme | Email: f.bo...@cs.ucc.ie
National University of Ireland, Cork | phone: +353-21-903163
Dept of Computer Science | fax: +353-21-903113
Cork, Ireland | WWW: http://yeats.ucc.ie/~fboehme/
William C. Cheng
>William C. Cheng wrote:
>
>> This is one advantage tgif with LaTeX Equation package has over xfig.
>
>I agree.
>
>> Tgif runs latex, dvips, and pstoepsi and import the EPSI file back into
>> the drawing. The LaTeX source is stored in an attribute of an object
>> and you can make it invisible easily.
>
>which works pretty well for me. I use LaTeX for years and have tried a
>great deal of drawing progs under different systems. I think I'll
>definitely stay with tgif which, for whatever reason, is not as widely
>known as it should be.
>
>I think, when searching the net for a good drawing prog to work with
>LaTeX, people easily overlook tgif because they may think it doesn't
>use enough fancy stuff. It's based on raw Xlib and the mentioned
>LateX equation package is packed with 'compress' (*.Z). From this,
>people may conclude that they have just found something from
>the early days of UNIX.
>However, I found that nothing is as good as tgif - for various reasons.
Thanks for the kind words!
>But there is something which should definitely be changed (William,
>haven't you some students or somebody to work for you...): the
>documentation. Comes as a tremendous man page which is really hard
>to read. There are things which I still don't understand. I have
>to say that man tgif is one of the most cryptic output I ever managed
>to get on my screen. I don't say that the page contains errors. It is
>simply too complex for tgif-beginners.
You are absolutely right. I keep telling myself that once the code
is stable, I'll spend some time writing some documentations. Well, that
time never came. Sorry about it! Right now, I'm looking at doing a
manual at the beginning of next year.
Daan Reuhman wrote a short introduction to tgif. I've just added a link
to it on tgif's FAQ page at <URL:http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/tgif/faq/>.
May be this will ease the pain!
Ruben Prins
I know there are multiple TeX implementations (I'm using Web2c/Win32), but I
was talking about graphics programs.
Ruben
uzsycz
Regards,
JP
Ruben Prins schrieb in Nachricht
<90822431...@jive.news.big-orange.net>...
Sven Utcke
> Andreas Scherer heeft geschreven in bericht
> >> I know TeX resides deeply burried within Unix, but I'd like to know
> >> whether there's a convenient solution for Windows (95/NT).
> >This is plain wrong. See http://www.tug.org, "TeX implementations".
> >
> >-- Andreas
>
> I know there are multiple TeX implementations (I'm using Web2c/Win32), but I
> was talking about graphics programs.
My boss just loves texcad. It's an old pascal-program, and I don't
think anybody has changed anything for years (meaning you need to
patch the exe if running on a machine faster than 200MHz --- I'm not
joking!). But if you're stuck with M$ you might give it a try (no
idea where to find it though).
Or try javafig, which is supposedly kind of running.
Sven
--
_ _ Lehrstuhl fuer Mustererkennung und Bildverarbeitung
| |_ __ | |__ Sven Utcke
| | ' \| '_ \ phone: +49 761 203 8274 Am Flughafen 17
|_|_|_|_|_.__/ fax : +49 761 203 8262 79110 Freiburg i. Brsg.
mailto:ut...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~lmb
Rodolfo Salinas
— Dr. Rodolfo Salinas-Villarreal https://sites.google.com/site/rodolfosalinas
http://winfig.com/
http://winfig.com/downloads/
Rodolfo Salinas
http://dia-installer.de/download/index.html.en