Quite Universal Circuit Simulator

Hello Raimund and Qucs team!

Thank you for your interest in xfigfrag.

> (To be honest we have to add that the current implementation could be 
> improved. All text attributes (font, size, angle, justification, color, 
> etc) are lost - which is a problem for us already.)

Yes, it is clearly in development.  I wrote this code primarily for 
myself, because I consider psfrag is the best way to insert text on 
figures.  Feedback is welcome :-) and including a patch in xfig would be 
even nicer!

If I understand correctly, the problem for you is that the text in the 
.fig that has no associated \psfrag command is not displayed with the 
correct attributes; is this correct?

I actually think that this can be resolved (since the fig2dev driver 
pstex_t does it), but it would require patching a bit more the fig2dev 
drivers.

Best regards,

               Eric

Hello Transfig team, Raimund, and Qucs team!

Raimund 'Raimi' Jacob <raimi@...> wrote:

[ looking for a way to use psfrag-based formulas in xfig images with 
pdflatex ]
> Looking for a solution we found Eric's great approach which we think is 
> the way to go: http://www.di.ens.fr/~colin/goodies/xfigfrag.html
>
> (To be honest we have to add that the current implementation could
> be improved. All text attributes (font, size, angle, justification,
> color, etc) are lost - which is a problem for us already.)
>
> For this solution to work one requires a patched fig2dev program.

Let me describe in more details how the thing works.  I added drivers in 
fig2dev that act in a similar way as pstex and pstex_t:

(1) The drivers `epsfrg' and `pdffrg' export the picture with all the text 
removed.  This is the same as the driver pstex or pdftex, except that, in 
these drivers, the non-special text is shown.  This could also be done on 
all current fig2dev drivers by specifying an option saying `Don't export 
any text of this figure'.

(2) The driver `frg' creates a LaTeX-readable description of the bounding 
box of the figure, together with the information of the text objects (text 
itself, location, and attributes).  This is more or less what the pstex_t 
or pdftex_t drivers achieve, except that:
    - these drivers only describe special text;
    - they really include LaTeX code that creates a box of appropriate size 
and inserts the text.  What I need is an output like
       \@xfigfrag@...}, where u is the unit
           length and b1...b4 are the bounding box
       \@xfigfrag@...} (ideally also with the other
           attributes, hidden, special, scaling, etc.), for each text on
           the figure.

Then a LaTeX style xfigfrag.sty defines these \@xfigfrag@... and 
\@xfigfrag@... commands, and, using hacks in graphicx.sty, everything 
works.

I'd be happy if this code were included in xfig.  But I know that it can 
clearly be improved; in particular, the \@xfigfrag@... command should 
really take as argument all the attributes of the text, so that these 
attributes can be used by the xfigfrag package if desired.

Any comment is welcome!

Best regards,

             Eric

Eric Colin de Verdiere wrote:

Hi Eric!

>> (To be honest we have to add that the current implementation could be
>> improved. All text attributes (font, size, angle, justification,
>> color, etc) are lost - which is a problem for us already.)
> 
> 
> Yes, it is clearly in development.  I wrote this code primarily for
> myself, because I consider psfrag is the best way to insert text on
> figures.  Feedback is welcome :-) and including a patch in xfig would be
> even nicer!
> 
> If I understand correctly, the problem for you is that the text in the
> .fig that has no associated \psfrag command is not displayed with the
> correct attributes; is this correct?

yep, correct.

> I actually think that this can be resolved (since the fig2dev driver
> pstex_t does it), but it would require patching a bit more the fig2dev
> drivers.

doing this would really be great, but i can volunteer only for testing
and patching :)

unfortunately the patch didnt make it to the xfig developers, the mail
bounced. i dont know how to contact them, the website is very anonymous.

if you continued developing your patch, i'd glady try harder to push the
patch upstream :)

	Raimund

-- 
                  ___    ___   _____________
                 /  /|  /  /_ /  ____/  ___/\      Nothing useful for
                /  / / /   _ /  / __/  / __\/      more than a decade
               /  /_/_/    \/  /_/_/  /_/
{www.|raimi@} /______/__/\._\.____/\.____/\ .org
              \._____\._\/\._\.___\/\.___\/

Hi Raimund and Qucs team,

> doing this would really be great, but i can volunteer only for testing 
> and patching :)

I'll try to do it, but I don't have much time now.  However, Xfig works 
with PostScript and LaTeX fonts.  With my method, everything will be fine 
with LaTeX fonts, but not entirely with PostScript fonts: you'll be able 
to export the text with PostScript attribute:
  * either in the .pdf image; then it will be correctly displayed, but any 
\psfrag on this text will be ineffective,
  * or in the .frg file; then, if \pffragged, everything will be fine, and 
if not, it will be displayed with the correct attributes except that it 
will be replaced by a LaTeX font.

I hope that won't be a problem.

> unfortunately the patch didnt make it to the xfig developers, the mail 
> bounced. i dont know how to contact them, the website is very anonymous.

Apparently the e-mail I sent them didn't bounce, so maybe you should 
retry (otherwise, they won't understand anything about my previous 
e-mail...).

> if you continued developing your patch, i'd glady try harder to push the 
> patch upstream :)

:-)


               Eric

Am Di, 16.05.2006, 12:00, schrieb Eric Colin de Verdiere:

> Hi Raimund and Qucs team,

Hello Eric,

>> doing this would really be great, but i can volunteer only for testing
>> and patching :)
>
> I'll try to do it, but I don't have much time now.  However, Xfig works
> with PostScript and LaTeX fonts.  With my method, everything will be fine
> with LaTeX fonts, but not entirely with PostScript fonts: you'll be able
> to export the text with PostScript attribute:
>   * either in the .pdf image; then it will be correctly displayed, but any
> \psfrag on this text will be ineffective,
>   * or in the .frg file; then, if \pffragged, everything will be fine, and
> if not, it will be displayed with the correct attributes except that it
> will be replaced by a LaTeX font.
>
> I hope that won't be a problem.

By default I was using the "LaTex font" "Default" when drawing the xfig
figures for the Qucs technical manual.

So I think we won't have a problem.  Correct?

Thanks for your efforts,
  Stefan.

> By default I was using the "LaTex font" "Default" when drawing the xfig 
> figures for the Qucs technical manual.
>
> So I think we won't have a problem.  Correct?

Yes, correct.


               Eric

Am Fr, 12.05.2006, 21:54, schrieb Eric Colin de Verdiere:

> Hello Transfig team, Raimund, and Qucs team!

Hi there,

> [ looking for a way to use psfrag-based formulas in xfig images with
> pdflatex ]
>> Looking for a solution we found Eric's great approach which we think is
>> the way to go: http://www.di.ens.fr/~colin/goodies/xfigfrag.html
>>
>> (To be honest we have to add that the current implementation could
>> be improved. All text attributes (font, size, angle, justification,
>> color, etc) are lost - which is a problem for us already.)
>>
>> For this solution to work one requires a patched fig2dev program.
>
> Let me describe in more details how the thing works.  I added drivers in
> fig2dev that act in a similar way as pstex and pstex_t:
>
> (1) The drivers `epsfrg' and `pdffrg' export the picture with all the text
> removed.  This is the same as the driver pstex or pdftex, except that, in
> these drivers, the non-special text is shown.  This could also be done on
> all current fig2dev drivers by specifying an option saying `Don't export
> any text of this figure'.
>
> (2) The driver `frg' creates a LaTeX-readable description of the bounding
> box of the figure, together with the information of the text objects (text
> itself, location, and attributes).  This is more or less what the pstex_t
> or pdftex_t drivers achieve, except that:
>     - these drivers only describe special text;
>     - they really include LaTeX code that creates a box of appropriate
> size
> and inserts the text.  What I need is an output like
>        \@xfigfrag@...}, where u is the unit
>            length and b1...b4 are the bounding box
>        \@xfigfrag@...} (ideally also with the
> other
>            attributes, hidden, special, scaling, etc.), for each text on
>            the figure.
>
> Then a LaTeX style xfigfrag.sty defines these \@xfigfrag@... and
> \@xfigfrag@... commands, and, using hacks in graphicx.sty, everything
> works.
>
> I'd be happy if this code were included in xfig.  But I know that it can
> clearly be improved; in particular, the \@xfigfrag@... command should
> really take as argument all the attributes of the text, so that these
> attributes can be used by the xfigfrag package if desired.
>
> Any comment is welcome!

Erm.  Short question: Do you have this already done?  Did I miss something?

Stefan.

Hi Stefan,

> Erm.  Short question: Do you have this already done?  Did I miss 
> something?

Yes, see http://www.di.ens.fr/~colin/goodies/xfigfrag.html .  But this has 
not be included in the release of xfig, so you need to compile fig2dev 
with the patch I did.

               Eric

Am Mi, 17.05.2006, 15:14, schrieb Eric Colin de Verdiere:

> Hi Stefan,

Hello,

>> Erm.  Short question: Do you have this already done?  Did I miss
>> something?
>
> Yes, see http://www.di.ens.fr/~colin/goodies/xfigfrag.html .  But this has
> not be included in the release of xfig, so you need to compile fig2dev
> with the patch I did.

Hm.. I couldn't find a difference between the above and the one we already
tried.  This we found out was unable to handle text attributes for texts
which were not psfrag'ed.  From your notes you send I concluded this was
now possible...  Definitely something I missed...

Stefan.

Hello Stefan,

>>> Erm.  Short question: Do you have this already done?  Did I miss 
>>> something?

> Hm.. I couldn't find a difference between the above and the one we 
> already tried.  This we found out was unable to handle text attributes 
> for texts which were not psfrag'ed.  From your notes you send I 
> concluded this was now possible...  Definitely something I missed...

Sorry for the misunderstanding.  I haven't made any changes to xfigfrag 
yet to handle text attributes for texts not psfrag'ed.  I think I'll be 
able to do that, but I don't have much time now; I'll tell you when this 
will be done.


               Eric

P.S.  Raimund: my e-mail to xfig-bugs also eventually bounced.

Hi Raimund, Stefan, and Qucs team!

You can find at
 	http://www.di.ens.fr/~colin/goodies/xfigfrag-1.1.tgz
a new version of xfigfrag that behaves (I hope) correctly with text 
without associated \psfrag command.

The only changes are in xfigfrag.sty and genfrg.c; the usage is unchanged.

I haven't tested this version extensively; feedback will be appreciated.

Regards,

               Eric