crimmins@csli.Stanford.EDU (Mark Crimmins) (12/03/90)
There has been a successful concerted effort to remove the Pictex manual from circulation, in order to protect the interests of Pictex's author. I have no problem with that, but it has made if very difficult to figure out just what Pictex *is*! It seems to be some kind of TeX/LaTeX picture environment, but beyond that, what is it? Is it printer specific (e.g., postscript stuff)? What does it add to the capabilities of LaTeX and epic.sty? Perhaps this sort of information could be included in Raymond Chen's very helpful "Supplementary TeX Information". Thanks for any information, Mark crimmins@csli.stanford.edu
raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen) (12/03/90)
I won't answer the underlying question of "What *is* Pictex", since other people will probably do a better job. I just wanted to respond to >Perhaps this sort of information could be included in Raymond Chen's ... >"Supplementary TeX Information". Actually, the reason why it is titled "Supplementary TeX information" is that it is meant to supplement Bobby Bodenheimer's "Frequently Asked Questions". You read the FAQ to figure out what you want, then you refer to the Supplement to see where you can get it. So I guess the answer to the suggestion is to say that "Giving detailed information about every package listed in the Supplement is beyond the scope of this document". Of course, if anybody volunteers to add detailed information about every package listed in the Supplement, I won't stop them. Heck, if anybody wants to *take over* maintenance of the Supplement, I'll gladly hand it over.
teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK) (12/03/90)
In article <16639@csli.Stanford.EDU> crimmins@csli.stanford.edu (Mark Crimmins) writes: > >There has been a successful concerted effort to remove the Pictex >manual from circulation, in order to protect the interests of Pictex's >author. I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, the PicTeX manual was never distributed in the first place. When PicTeX first came out, Michael made copies of the macros available from a Chicago ftp site (if I recall correctly) and there *was* a DVI file distributed which contained the first page or two of the manual, just enough to tell you what PicTeX was. This was useful, of course. If people have been busily deleting this, they shouldn't. PicTeX is a macro set for drawing graphs and other shapes. It can read a table of values and plot them. It can also draw almost anything you want, but at a price in machine memory and speed. It is a wonderful package by all accounts, but for more than trivial uses you will probably need a Big TeX and a fast machine. It's method of working is to construct the drawings from rules and closesly spaced dots. Dominik