The thread 'Context typesetting and transparency' answers a related question. Would you accept patches so that asymptote can work with plain TeX (perhaps with a command-line option like --engine=plain vs the default of --engine=latex)?
I prefer plain TeX's simpler conceptual model and use it for all my documents except under duress. So I would like to reuse any TeX macros in the texpreamble and not depend on LaTeX.
The tricky conversion might be the minipage() and includegraphics() functions?
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Yes, in fact we would prefer that users submit patches for customized features, instead of relying on us to do all of the coding. Development will proceed faster that way.
Any way of including postscript in TeX should work (e.g. psfig or epsfig). The minipage environment isn't critical.
Keep in mind that at some point we are going to produce pdf directly, to allow for features available only in pdf (like transparency, function shading, embedded movie/3d formats).
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Good, I'll work up a patch. I'll use \epsfbox (from epsf.tex/epsf.sty) for figure inclusion. For producing pdf directly (perhaps a boolean argument), it could instead use pdftex's pdf inclusion primitives.
Does the pdfmark postscript operator, together with distiller or ps2pdf (gs), get you the PDF features you are planning to use? Actually I'm just looking in Adobe's pdfmark manual. It shows how to do transparency but has nothing about function shading, let alone 3d formats.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
The thread 'Context typesetting and transparency' answers a related question. Would you accept patches so that asymptote can work with plain TeX (perhaps with a command-line option like --engine=plain vs the default of --engine=latex)?
I prefer plain TeX's simpler conceptual model and use it for all my documents except under duress. So I would like to reuse any TeX macros in the texpreamble and not depend on LaTeX.
The tricky conversion might be the minipage() and includegraphics() functions?
Yes, in fact we would prefer that users submit patches for customized features, instead of relying on us to do all of the coding. Development will proceed faster that way.
Any way of including postscript in TeX should work (e.g. psfig or epsfig). The minipage environment isn't critical.
Keep in mind that at some point we are going to produce pdf directly, to allow for features available only in pdf (like transparency, function shading, embedded movie/3d formats).
Good, I'll work up a patch. I'll use \epsfbox (from epsf.tex/epsf.sty) for figure inclusion. For producing pdf directly (perhaps a boolean argument), it could instead use pdftex's pdf inclusion primitives.
Does the pdfmark postscript operator, together with distiller or ps2pdf (gs), get you the PDF features you are planning to use? Actually I'm just looking in Adobe's pdfmark manual. It shows how to do transparency but has nothing about function shading, let alone 3d formats.