which one: xfig, dia or inkscape

[abdelkader belahcene]

Hi
every body,
until now, I used  xfig to draw   my figures and graphs,  but I am not satisfied, specially when I want to no latin caracters or formula (like in latex)
I tried inkscape it seems better ??? what about  dia ??

I want  to a good choice.
any idea
thanks a lot

[Roger Leigh]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 07:33:01PM +0200, abdelkader belahcene wrote:
> Hi
> every body,
> until now, I used xfig to draw my figures and graphs, but I am not
> satisfied, specially when I want to no latin caracters or formula (like in
> latex)
> I tried inkscape it seems better ??? what about dia ??

Dia looks nice on screen, but its exported output (postscript etc.)
is (or was?) awful. The fonts on screen might fit inside boxes,
but would overflow them when you convert to a printable form. It's
also far less capable than inkscape; I would only consider it if
you need some of the specialised diagramming tools it provides that
inkscape doesn't. Inkscape's postscript/PDF output are fine. The
only glitch I saw was export of complex gradients to PDF, but I think
that's fixed now.

Personally, I'd go with inkscape. It's generally excellent. I now
use it exclusively except for the occasional use of Xfig when I want
pic output (for troff, when I don't want to write pic by hand). Its
drawing model is nice, and as a previously heavy user of both Xfig and
dia, I don't think I'm being too unbiased in saying that it's fairly
clearly superior to both. The only exception with Xfig is its grid
system (but you can define custom grids in inkscape) and object
alignment (inkscape is better and more complex, but sometimes the
simplistic Xfig way makes it easier to line things up).

My only major beef with inkscape is that if you link to an image, it
always defaults to an absolute path, and it's annoying to manually
convert to relative. You need this if copying directory trees between
different systems or else all your links become invalid.

I've never put LaTeX formulae in any of the above; I would probably
go with Xfig/eepic for that, or do the drawing directly in LaTeX.
[but haven't tried either.]


Regards,
Roger

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[Wawrzek Niewodniczanski]

On 09/20/11 18:33, abdelkader belahcene wrote:

Hi
every body,
until now, I used  xfig to draw   my figures and graphs,  but I am not satisfied, specially when I want to no latin caracters or formula (like in latex)

AFAIR XFig was great for formulas and non-latin characters. I.e. see following link:
http://epb.lbl.gov/xfig/drawing.html#text


Wawrzek

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Citrix Systems, Building 101, Cambridge Science Park, CB4 0FY, Cambridge
PhD in Quantum Chemistry, MSc in Molecular EngineeringM

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> abdelkader belahcene <abela...@gmail.com> writes:

> until now, I used xfig to draw my figures and graphs, but I am not
> satisfied, specially when I want to no latin caracters or formula
> (like in latex)

The PostScript graphics produced by XFig could often easily be
combined with LaTeX formulae thanks to the ‘psfrag’ package (as
in: \usepackage {psfrag}.) Unfortunately, it's fundamentally
incompatible with pdflatex(1).

Alternatively, the graphics could be turned into any of the
“editable” vector formats that could be referenced from within a
LaTeX document (such as PIC, MetaPost, etc.) and manually edited
to add all the necessary text and formulae.

> I tried inkscape it seems better ???

Inkscape is essentially the same, but it uses a standard format
(SVG) for its graphics, instead of inventing its own (what XFig
did, preasumably because there was no such a format at the time
XFig was developed.) Also, both the SVG format and Inkscape
itself, AIUI, have much better support for internationalization.

Unfortunately, doing formulae in Inkscape is nowhere as easy as
it's in LaTeX.

There's, however, the pMMLtoSVG package, which is supposed to
produce quality SVG rendering of formulae typeset in
Presentation MathML. Also, there're a few converters from
pseudo-TeX format to MathML (check, e. g., the ttm and latexml
Debian packages.) I don't know whether pMMLtoSVG is currently
in a usable state, though. (It's my opinion that the project
would benefit should a few more volunteers join in.)

> what about dia ??

Dia has support for what I prefer to call “parametric graphics”.
I. e., it could be extended by “plugins”, each providing a
particular “parametric” shape. E. g., there could be a plugin
that draws a star, which has the number of points as the
parameter. To the best of my knowledge, it's the sole advantage
of using Dia instead of either Inkscape or XFig.

> I want to a good choice. any idea thanks a lot

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[Selim T. Erdogan]

Wawrzek Niewodniczanski, 22.09.2011:

> On 09/20/11 18:33, abdelkader belahcene wrote:
> >Hi
> >every body,
> >until now, I used xfig to draw my figures and graphs, but I am
> >not satisfied, specially when I want to no latin caracters or
> >formula (like in latex)
>
> AFAIR XFig was great for formulas and non-latin characters. I.e. see
> following link:
> http://epb.lbl.gov/xfig/drawing.html#text

I didn't notice it during a quick look at the above link, but you can
also use formulas written in latex notation as part of your xfig text.
You have to set one of the text options to "special." Googling for
"xfig latex special" returns many hits, the first of which (for me) is

http://epb.lbl.gov/xfig/latex_and_xfig.html

The bottom of that page also describes how to use it with pdflatex.
(An issue brought up by another poster.)

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