[OS X TeX] diagonal arrows in figures

[Aaron Jackson]

On Apr 20, 2005, at 1:58 PM, Philipp Mathey wrote:

>> But whichever Xy-pic feature you use, it will always be fastest
>> to create an image from each diagram, then just reuse this image
>> on later runs, rather than reinterpret every diagram each time.
>>
>> For this, you want the same kind of strategy as what  pdftricks
>> provides, or  ps4pdf .
>>
>> Learn how to use these, and your documents containing Xy-pic diagrams
>> will compile much, much faster --- on all but the first run after
>> some change has been made to a diagr
>
>
>
>
> I have never used either pdftricks nor ps4pdf. I briefly looked at the 
> documentation :
> which one is "better" ? I am just interested in typesetting 
> commutative diagrams (for mathematics) , nothing else.

It's a matter of opinion as to which one is better.  I think they both 
do the same thing.

> I prefer the syntax of \xymatrix{...} . Also, I am using pdflatex, so 
> , I guess, the only options for xypic are "all" or "pdftex,all"(for 
> this a manual installation of xypdf would be
> be necessary)
>
> For pdftricks :  would having
>
> usepackage[all]{xy}
>
> \usepackage{pdftricks}
> \begin{psinputs}
> \usepackage{color}
> \usepackage[all] {xy}
> \end{psinputs}
>
> in the preamble be enough in order for xypic to compile faster ? I 
> tried that and pdftricks seems to load correctly but I am not sure 
> that I notice any dramatic increases in speed.
> Maybe I am missing something.

I think you have misunderstood what was written above.  pdftricks and 
ps4pdf are only useful if you are drawing diagrams with pstricks.  What 
they do is save the pstricks portions as separate files then run them 
through latex and some other programs and then include the output back 
into your document.  I think the message above was telling you to use 
the same approach  with your document... save the pictures as separate 
files, process, process them and then include them back as complete 
graphics not as xypicts.  That way you don't have to process every 
picture every time you process your document.

Aaron

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