Drawing with TeX
There are many packages to do pictures in (La)TeX itself (rather than
importing graphics created externally), ranging from simple use of
LaTeX picture environment, through enhancements like
epic, to
sophisticated (but slow) drawing with PiCTeX. Depending on your type
of drawing, and setup, four systems should be at the top of your list
to look at:
- pstricks; this gives you access to all the power of
PostScript from TeX itself, by sophisticated use of
\specials. You need a decent DVI to PostScript driver
(like dvips), but the results are worth it. The
well-documented package gives you not only low-level drawing
commands (and full colour) like lines, circles, shapes at arbitrary
coordinates, but also high-level macros for framing text, drawing
trees and matrices, 3D effects, and more.
- MetaPost; you liked Metafont, but never got to grips with font files?
Try MetaPost -
all the power of Metafont, but it generates PostScript figures; MetaPost
is nowadays part of most serious (La)TeX distributions. Knuth
uses it for all his work...
- Mfpic; you liked Metafont, but can't understand the
language? The package makes up Metafont or MetaPost code for you
within using familiar-looking TeX macros. Not quite the
full power of Metafont, but a friendlier interface.
- You liked PiCTeX but don't have enough memory or time? Look
at Eitan Gurari's dratex, which is as powerful as most
other TeX drawing packages, but is an entirely new
implementation, which is not as hard on memory, is much more
readable (and is fully documented).
- dratex
- graphics/dratex.tar.gz
- mfpic
- graphics/mfpic.tar.gz
- pstricks
- graphics/pstricks.tar.gz