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eepic and pstricks



On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Jay Belanger wrote:

>
> "Andrew D. Hwang" <ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu> writes:
>
> > To use pstricks commands, put
> >
> >   use_pstricks();
>
> Does this then use pstricks in lieu of eepic?
>
Not exactly; it puts some pstricks commands into the picture header so
that pstricks can use the same page coordinates as eepic. (The line width
and fill style are also set.) Both eepic and pstricks can be used in the
file; the rest of the figure could be written entirely in pstricks (using
raw output), but that isn't necessary (or pleasant:). When use_pstricks is
set, paths such as splines and ellipses are still drawn using lists of
points (like an eepic path) rather than with pstricks macros, but \psline
is used instead of the eepic macro \path. (That's why graphs get filled
unless use_pstricks is unset or the fillstyle is set to "none".) In short,
use_pstricks is a hack to get color filling rather than a systematic way
to use pstricks in the output. (Maybe the command should be re-named...?)

> >   psset("<pstricks parameters>");
> >   fill_color("<pstricks color>");
>
> The first command seems to remove a layer of abstraction; the user is
> then almost using pstricks rather than ePiX, I would think.
>
Yes; that's part of the hackiness. :)

eepic's abilities are fairly simple: LaTeX typography; lines of arbitrary
length, slope, and width; and circles in a wider range of radii than in
the LaTeX picture environment. Colors and (gray) path filling come from
pstcol (pstricks+color with small modifications for compatibility), so
already the output is a hybrid of types. The introduction of use_pstricks
can (and should:) be regarded as a minor extension that facilitates the
use of pstricks path-drawing and filling macros in the LaTeX picture
environment. Eventually (TNG) it may be possible to write "pure" pstricks
files (i.e., without eepic macros). For now, since both eepic and pstricks
are standard parts of LaTeX, I don't know of compelling reasons not to mix
modes. (Some dvi previewers don't handle pstricks, while as far as I know
all can handle eepic, but gv, xpdf, et. al. are widely available.)


Andrew D. Hwang			ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu
Department of Math and CS	http://math.holycross.edu/~ahwang
College of the Holy Cross	(508) 793-2458 (Office: 320 Swords)
Worcester, MA, 01610-2395	(508) 793-3530 (fax)