Re: grouping available terminals together

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Daniel J Sebald <dan...@ie...> wrote:
> 
>> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>
>> > I was thinking about looking into TikZ. It works with a wide variety
>> > of engines (so it would work with dvips/pdfTeX and XeTeX) and with all
>> > three formats (TeX/LaTeX/ConTeXt). But I first need to have the
>> > ConTeXt terminal under the roof (hoping that it will make it into the
>> > official gnuplot one day), and I don't use TikZ at all, so it would
>> > take me some time to learn it. Metapost is a nice programming
>> > language, but TeX is the worst programming language I've ever tried to
>> > use.
>>
>> TeX is an old language, coinciding with some of the beginnings of 
>> computer software--the days when memory was small and programming 
>> languages were nascent.  Hence the advent of LaTeX macros.  I believe 
>> D. Knuth decided to freeze the language much to the chagrin of those 
>> who would want to add some improvements.
> 
> 
> Who prevents them from doing so?

Knuth--a conscious decision in 1989 that there should be no change in the language, only bug fixes; and when he's gone there'll be no more of those, the idea being that if you have a file that compiles under TeX in 1989, it will compile under TeX in 2089.  (There've been a lot of articles about the obsolescence of programs and data as time marches on.)

For the same reason, there is a lot of resistance to changing gnuplot's syntax or behavior.

[BTW, can I get any movement on the idea of unifying the output symbols moving from terminal driver to terminal driver?  How about the "blue" "stars" "dashdot" idea?]


> There have been wonderful additions:
> we have eTeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX, (dead Aleph & Omega), luaTeX ...
> 
> Recent TeX distributions use pdfTeX instead of original TeX and
> original Knuth's "bitmap" cmr fonts are not used any more either.

Right, but they aren't called "TeX".  In the future if some mischievous individual decides to usurp the name, I'd suspect an uproar from the software community.


>> you can generate EPS files via mouse.  Xfig, like gnuplot, allows a 
>> special flag so it too can create combined PostScript/LaTeX files.
> 
> 
> But that means an additional non-interactive step or am I
> understanding wrong.

Yes:

1) Save as foo.
2) Inside some tex file (foo.tex) include:
  \resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{\input{foo.pstex_t}}
3) latex foo.tex
4) dvips foo -o foo.ps  (add -E if you want a EPS file directly)
5) ps2eps foo.ps foo.eps

Then you have an EPS file that can be included in another LaTeX file.  If you don't want to do that much work, at step 2 simply include the command in the LaTeX document.  The reason for doing 3-4-5 is to create graphic files a journal editor can easily work with.  (Most journals accept LaTeX files.)


> I never use XFig. I manage to do all the
> mathematical graphics with command-line-like tools, and for "art" xfig
> is not good enough. (But for those who find it useful it's still a
> nice tool.)

On the Xfig screen, the drawings look crude, but when exported as PostScript they look similar to other PostScript output.  Granted, we aren't talking super high end graphics, but in the scientific fields, art is in the formulas, no?

Dan


-- 

Dan Sebald
phone: 608 256 7718
email: daniel DOT sebald AT ieee DOT org
URL: http://webpages DOT charter DOT net/dsebald/