[OS X TeX] Electronic Engineering Reports

[Roussanka Loukanova]

Perhaps I should add  what I have used for some diagrams:

http://www.lsv.ens-cachan.fr/~gastin/gastex/gastex.html

Roussanka

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:

> Others have already offered a number of suggestions, I'll just add my 2c to 
> this.
> Depending on the number of reports and such graphs that you are planning to 
> create I would recommend it is worth your while to learn one of the languages 
> designed to produce such graphs, for instance MetaPost as you mention. I 
> personally use R these days, which specializes in statistics but its graphics 
> package is particularly powerful. But I have used MetaPost in the past. I've 
> never actually messed with pstricks, so can't offer an opinion on that.
>
> Basically if you are going to generate a lot of diagrams, one of the key 
> things you would want is a way to replicate a pattern. E.g. for graph paper 
> you would want to replicate a vertical line a bunch of times, and a 
> horizontal line a bunch of times. You might then want to adjust widths and 
> things. For all these you need a language that allows you to use variables 
> and things. Similarly you might want to have blocks that are the individual 
> circuit pieces, and then they come together in a bigger construct. You would 
> want to be reusing things you've already done each time.
>
> In the long run, if you have to produce more than a couple of figures, 
> learning languages devoted to graphing will pay off I think (and metapost is 
> really not that complicated IMO). And for anyone who has managed to learn 
> LaTeX, these languages are not such a big step.
>
> You might want to have a look at Graphviz:
> http://www.graphviz.org/ . It's both a GUI program and an underlying language 
> like metapost. I haven't personally used it, but I've heard good things.
> Don't really know though if you "include" it in LaTeX in any other form than 
> via its image outputs. Don't know how important that is to you either.
>
> Haris Skiadas
> Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
> Hanover College
>
> On Mar 7, 2007, at 12:12 PM, Dima wrote:
>
>> I'm quite familiar with LaTeX now (ie typesetting, text, using TOC,
>> labels etc) as well as typing lots of equations.
>> 
>> Now I want to draw circuit diagrams, timing diagrams, as well as
>> graphs, and graph paper.
>> 
>> I heard about MetaPost and PStricks, but it seems to me that these are
>> just to much to learn to do "draw" quickly. Same applies to some
>> packages I found around CTAN.
>> 
>> Just today I found JpicEdt, Java based application which does this.
>> 
>> But are there any other programs to do this or should I learn
>> PStricks/MetaPost (yak) or are there any better ways to do the
>> following statements:
>> 
>> 1) Can I make a float figure which has grid/axis to fill in by hand
>> after a print it
>> 2) Can I create a full page of customised graph paper
>> 3) Can I draw on those axis graphs of math expressions
>> 4) Can I add points (is black dot big letter A (or alphabetical
>> counter better) then (2,5) and label in it as well to reference from
>> test)
>> 5) Diagrams with symbols for electronic symbols you can think off with 
>> labelling
>> 6) would be incredible to be able to actually draw on top ie smily
>> faces, text, LaTeX equations
>> 
>> + clarifying points
>> 
>> Metafont and PStricks are back-ends that render the source files of
>> graphical information made using specialised commands (Y/N/not
>> really), and it can be embedded into Latex document, ie include

------------------------- Helpful Info -------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/
List Reminders & Etiquette: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/list/