[OS X TeX] Drawing diagrams: what's better?

[Tim Brophy]

The application GeoGebra can produce beautiful art work and has an option to translate it into Tikz. It is certainly worth considering.

Tim Brophy


On 17 May 2010, at 15:49, David Watson wrote:

> On May 17, 2010, at 9:02 AM, John B. Thoo wrote:
> 
>> Hi, everyone.  I hope this isn't a FAQ: Is it better to draw diagrams using something like PSTricks or Tikz, or something like xfig or Inkscape?  What are the pros and cons?  TIA.
> 
> If you are drawing diagrams, I think Tikz provides beautiful output, but perhaps a steeper learning curve.
> Definitely look through the wonderful manual and see if the examples there are appropriate for the types of diagrams you wish to prepare.
> 
> Inkscape is probably more suited as a free replacement for Illustrator, although it isn't marketed as such.
> You can export svg, eps, ps, and pdf (depending on your Mac OS X version), which is valuable if you appreciate such things as vector artwork that can be scaled without loss of resolution.
> I save my work as eps files (beware that Inkscape doesn't output a proper bounding box!) which I convert to pdf with epstopdf.
> 
> I've used gnuplot, Mathematica and R for plotting mathematical/statistical data - again, using the epstopdf route - and these programs have native "latex" output modes, should you want to try that.
> They all require more or less of learning curve in order to produce plots that are informative, but I think the final product is well worth the trouble.
> 
> It's hard to know "what's better" without knowing what you are trying to do.
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> 
> 
> 
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