[comp.text.tex] What *is* Pictex?

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