[OS X TeX] Emulating LaTeXit with regular latex

[Alan Munn]

On Aug 29, 2010, at 10:41 AM, Herbert Schulz wrote:

>
> On Aug 29, 2010, at 9:28 AM, Alan Munn wrote:
>
>> On Aug 29, 2010, at 2:05 AM, Ross Moore wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 29/08/2010, at 12:53 PM, Alan Munn <amunn at gmx.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> LaTeXit does a wonderful job of creating small images that are  
>>>> exactly the size of the typeset text, no more, no less.  How does  
>>>> it do it?  Is there a way to do what LaTeXit does just using  
>>>> regular TeX tools? (I don't care if it's more complicated.)
>>>
>>> You can do this with pdflatex, xetex, whatever.
>>
>>> TeXshop's \ship out primitive can ship out any \box, containing  
>>> whatever you want.
>>> You have to be careful about margins and offsets, but these can be  
>>> set to zero locally as you ship out a page that is exactly the  
>>> size that you want.
>>>
>>> Presumably this is what LaTeXit does. Certainly it is what  
>>> LaTeX2HTML does, when it makes images for use with web pages.  
>>> There may be some more graphics manipulations to get the size and  
>>> resolution correct. This is all pretty standard technology, for  
>>> say 20 years or more now.
>>
>>
>> Hi Ross, it may be standard technology, but not for (mere) LaTeX  
>> users like me, I think, since \shipout is a command that although  
>> I'm aware of its existence, I've certainly had no occasion to use.   
>> (Especially since any discussion of TeX's output routine (which is  
>> where \shipout is most often used?) usually comes along with dire  
>> warnings about how tricky it can be :-).
>>
>> I guess I'll read up a bit on output routines although a simple  
>> example that would get me started would probably help too.
>>
>> Alan
>>
>
> Howdy,
>
> Hmmm... While visial rather than analytic you can use TeXShop's  
> Selection Tool in the Preview Window and the drag and drop to the  
> Desktop.

No, the whole point of this question is to find a method that is cross- 
platform.  If I only needed to do this on a Mac, I'd just use LaTeXit  
and be done with it.  I don't have a penchant for deliberately  
avoiding great tools already at my disposal :-)

Alan

-- 
Alan Munn
amunn at gmx.com