jPicEdt Files

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Updates -including binaries and sources-, as well as documentation, history, installation procedure 
and bugs report, are available from http://www.jpicedt.org

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MAIN FEATURES

jPicEdt is a software aimed at alleviating the burden of using PsTricks, eepic or LaTeX's picture environment macros in a LaTeX file.
It allows the user to draw graphical objects using graphic primitives (e.g. splines, arcs, polygons,...), position them
easily with the mouse, and add text using LaTeX/PsTricks box commands (e.g. dashbox, psframebox,...). Yet this is not a 100% WYSIWYG software, 
and arguments of box commands are displayed as is (jpicedt doesn't include any TeX compiler !).

As of release 1.3.2, pictures can be saved to one of the three following formats :
- LaTeX's standard picture environment, including emulated objects, e.g. lines of any slope 
  (which LaTeX doesn't support natively), circles of any size, ellipses, arcs and polygons.
- epic/eepic, including dashed lines, shading, filled arcs,... 
- PsTricks macro packages : almost every macro in the pstricks.sty package are supported, yet support for add-ons (i.e. pst-node.sty, pst-coil.sty
  and gradient.sty) is still underway.
jPicEdt can also parse files that include macros in one of these three formats. This allows in particular to load files generated by 
GnuPlot with a "gset term eepic" or "gset term pstricks" command. 

jPicEdt is written in Java, and is therefore 100% multiplatform. Older releases (<=1.2) are JDK1.1.x compliant ; current
release works with any JDK >= 1.3 (i.e. Java2).

jPicEdt is free software, and is licensed under GNU Public License.
It has i18n support for the english, french, portuguese and spanish languages.

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Files included with the present distribution are:

jPicEdt.README				this file
jpicedt-1_3_2_pre_10.jar		latest Java2-compliant pre-release
jpicedt-1_3_2_pre_10.src.tgz            Java sources
jpicedt-addons.tgz                      scripts for various platforms and LaTeX distributions allowing
                                        LaTeX and related tools to be run from inside jPicEdt.

Latest JDK1.1-compliant releases and/or Java2-compliant stable releases can be found at www.jpicedt.org.



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Quick Start

If you're using a Java2-compliant Java Virtual Machine, download
jpicedt-1_3_2_pre_10.jar to any directory of your choice, then enter the
following command line : 

    java -jar jpicedt-1_3_2_pre_10.jar

There's a bit of configuration to be carried out, most notably if you want to be able to run
LaTeX, DVI, Ghostview, etc... from inside jPicEdt. First of all, you need to download and uncompress
the addons.tgz archive, select the script appropriate for your OS and LaTeX distribution, 
then tell jPicEdt where to find the corresponding executables: this can
be done in the "Preferences/Commands" menu. Please look through the online
documentation for examples.

If for any reason you're still using a JDK1.1 Java Virtual Machine (you might then very likely be a MacOS <=8.x user), 
please see installation notes at www.jpicedt.org. 
Please also note that a JDK1.3 implementation is now available for MacOS X.


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Questions, criticisms/congratulation, contributions, translations, bug reports, etc. are
sincerely welcomed ! Please send an email to syd@jpicedt.org, I'd be delighted to give you an 
answer as soon as possible.