[OS X TeX] fragmaster, dvips and pdflatex problem

[Ross Moore]

Hello Michael,

On 26/06/2006, at 12:29 AM, Michael Williams wrote:

> Hi,

> On an tangentially related subject, is psfrag the preferred way of
> including TeX fonts and maths in Gnuplot-generated figures, or is it
> unnecessarliy complex?

It is an OK way to do it, since you can get very
nice results.

I certainly would not describe is as being
"unnecessarily complex", since labelling graphics nicely
is actually quite a complex task.

Be aware though, that  psfrag  does have some drawbacks.

  a.  Don't allow your labels to protrude outside the area
      occupied by the graphic that you are labelling,
      since the added size is not known to TeX, hence
      cannot be taken into account when posiioning the
      image on the page. As a result the position of the
      labelled figure just may look wrong.

  a'. You can overcome a. using the  ps4pdf or pst-pdf
      packages, with appropriate options, or pdftricks.
      (This adds more complexity.)
      An earlier thread on this list has discussed the
      use of these packages.


  b.  The .eps graphic that you create for  psfrag
      is not of much use in other settings, due to
      the spurious text-names for the labels.

   The WaRMreader package/technique was designed as
   a way to position labels over graphics, so as to
   avoid such difficulties.
       http://www-texdev.ics.mq.edu.au/WARM/

   Gary Grey's  WarmFigToPDF  application implements
   the WaRMreader technique.
       http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/WFTPDF/

   The latter requires Adobe's Illustrator with a free
   plug-in module, and this is the easiest way to use
   the WaRMreader technique. However, it can still be
   used without these extra tools (more complexity!).


  c.  psfrag  is essentially a dead-end, so far as
     future development is concerned, since it requires
     programming features of the PostScript language.
     As such, there cannot be an easy PDF equivalent.

     Thus it will probably never be useful for adding
     labels requiring characters from (un-subsetted)
     OpenType fonts.

>
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Michael Williams
> http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/MichaelWilliams/


Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore


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Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                            fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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