[pstricks] the backwards compatibility issue

[Herbert Voss]

John Frampton schrieb:
> The major problem for me has been the change in the way that the 
> baseline for \pspicture is reset.  I have many old documents that now 
> crash.  I keep meaning to write a macro \pspictureold and add it to 
> pstricks.tex.  That way I could simply say \let\pspicture=\pspictureold 
> in order to typeset the old documents with minimal bother.  It is a 
> considerable bother now, because the old style resets the baseline by 
> giving a percentage of the total height, whereas the new style gives it 
> as an absolute dimension.
> 
> It seems to me that if some backwards compatibility problems are forced 
> for one reason or another, it might be possible for pstricks.tex to 
> include some "oldstyle" definitions of this sort, to ease the 
> compatibility issues that arise.


there is now a new optional argument for pstricks.sty

\usepackage[97]{pstricks}

which loads the pstricks97.tex file instead of the current
pstricks.tex. the version from 1997 has the old behaviour
with \pspicture[<value>],
but
- no extended dashed lines
- no linecap option
- no linejoin
- no opacity and strokeopacity
- no shift and showgrid option

the files should be installed by a texlive update, if you
have the current texlive 2008 installed. Otherwise get the
files from
http://www.ctan.org/get/graphics/pstricks/base/generic/pstricks97.tex
http://www.ctan.org/get/graphics/pstricks/base/latex/pstricks.sty

Herbert