Re: ePiX problems

["Andrew D. Hwang" <ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu>]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003, Ryszard Tanas wrote:

> I was trying your nice program ePiX to draw some pictures and I found some
> problems. I do not know if these are just my problems because I do
> something wrong, or maybe these are some bugs?
> I tried version 0.8.11.rc2 under Debian Linux, gcc version 3.3.2,
> Ghostscript 8.11
>
Dear Ryszard,

Thanks for your message! Here are some quick replies:

> I have found that:
> 1. function circle() does not work. I get message about syntax error
>
This could be a bug. Please email a minimal sample file and I'll see if
I can duplicate the problem.

> 2. arrow() does not respect color declaration and is black
>
Arrowheads are white filled, which causes the color to revert to black.
This is probably something that could be fixed if I knew more about
Postscript...

> 3. I have to repeat color declarations before drawing each object
>    otherwise the next object is black
>
That's strange (unless the objects are arrows or swatches:). Again, please
send a minimal example and I'll have a look.

> 4. I tried function stretch() together with dashed() to get the same
>    length of a dash and empty space but I failed to get it
>
Currently, ePiX uses eepic.sty's dashed and dotted line capabilities.
These seem to be designed for polygonal paths with a smallish number of
vertices, not for function plots. At the cost of larger file size (and
possibly longer LaTeX processing time) dotted and dashed paths could be
created "natively", by drawing the actual dashes as two-point paths and
dots as individual LaTeX characters. This isn't elegant, but might look
better...

Best regards,

Andy

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