[comp.text.tex] Novice question: dvips5.4 & lplainext

deby@cs.utwente.nl (Rolf de By) (06/28/91)

This is a novice question on postscript extensions to lplain. My knowledge
of postcript is virtually non-existent, and what I would like to do may not
be possible at all.

I used to work with files called "lplainext.tex" and "lplainext.psm"
which allowed to use some additional macro's in LaTeX's figure environment.
My question concerns one of them, "PStilt", with which you could place
some text at an arbitrary slope in the figure. Now that we use Rokicki's
dvips it fails, obviously because the prolog file of that package is
incompatible with the one we had (ArborText's dvips). I hope someone affluent
in postscript has an immediate remedy.

Consider the following statement

	\put(4,6){\PStilt(45,16){some text}}

which would place "some text" at a slope of 16/45 at (4,6)

The original definitions are:

\def\PS#1{% allows user to send LaserWriter a PostScript command
\special{ps::#1}%

\def\PStilt(#1,#2)#3{% Rotates #3 to a slope #2/#1
% Original macro by Jim Sterken of Textset, 6/25/85.
\PS{[inline,begin] gsave
                   Xpos Ypos translate
                   #2 #1 atan rotate
                   Xpos neg Ypos neg translate}%
#3%
\PS{[inline,end] grestore}%
}


My current dvips fails on two things here:

1. the "inline," part
2. "Xpos" and "Ypos"

Ad 1. Simply removing "inline," does not seem to hurt.

Ad 2. This is the hard one, which I cannot resolve. Are there dvips5.4 
      equivalences to "Xpos" and "Ypos"?

Any help would be appreciated enormously.

Rolf
-- 
Rolf A. de By
Vakgroep Informatiesystemen			Tel   : +31-53-893753
Faculteit der Informatica			secr. : +31-53-893690
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