LEICHTER@Venus.YCC.Yale.EDU ("Jerry Leichter ", LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU) (05/03/88)
As a User Services Consultant at Marquette University, I have recently received [the enclosed] inquiry by a student here about engineering circuit symbols generated using METAFONT. We have TeX and METAFONT here, but have not had the opportunity to develop any fonts of this type.... --------------------------------------------------------------------- I would like information on whether anyone has done any work with METAFONT to create electrical and/or mechanical circuit symbols, such as resistors, inductors, dashpots, springs, etc., to allow direct creation of engineering circuitry in TeX/LaTeX files, or, along the same line, any method to specify the inclusion of graphic files directly into a TeX/LaTeX output file at a particular point. The idea being that schematics and figures could be `drawn right in' to the format, rather than hand drawing or cut-n-pasteing and photocopying those pages after final copy outputs. Any and all responses would be appreciated. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The best place to ask about this sort of stuff is the TeXhax mailing list. The following information is taken from a recent TeXhax issue: %%% Concerning subscriptions, address changes, unsubscribing: %%% BITNET: send a one-line mail message to LISTSERV@TAMVM1.BITNET: %%% SUBSCRIBE TEX-L <your name> % to subscribe %%% %%% All others: send mail to %%% texhax-request@score.stanford.edu %%% please send a valid arpanet address!! %%% %%% All submissions to: texhax@score.stanford.edu As to your particular questions: I've never heard of anyone producing such a font, but there's all SORTS of stuff out there. It certainly sounds like something that might be worth doing! Note that just having the characters available is only half the battle: You'll also want some convenient way to place them on the page. There are a number of TeX graphics packages out there already - LaTeX's picture stuff and Sunil Podar's "epic" extensions to it (the latter available from the LaTeX style-file archives at Rochester); Michael Wichura's PicTeX; and John Renner's TeXtyl come to mind. None of these is really quite right for what you have in mind, though you might be able to draw ideas from them. Again, asking around in TeXhax is probably the best way to produce further information. -- Jerry