Dear Francesco
Thank you very much for taking the time to try out WARMreader
and giving us this *very helpful* feedback on the Adobe plug-in.
We will certainly try to incorporate your suggestions and
work with Tom Ruark at Adobe to improve the plug-in.
I will forward this message to Tom.
The current version of the plug-in is just an alpha pre-release of a work
in progress that we posted as there was a lot of discussion about the
problems of labelling.
Ross is going to be presenting it for the first
time at a local presentation at CalTech (Wednesday Aug 8, at 1 pm. in
Pasadena, CA so if you are interested and will be in the neighborhood,
write to me) and at the TUG2001 annual meeting on Aug 15 at the University
of Delaware (see http://www.tug.org/tug2001/).
Those of you who are close to Delaware please come as the meeting will
be very interesting. (includes, pdfTeX, XML, MathML, and Richard Koch
will be there showing us how to install TeXshop on Thursday Aug 16)
Single Day registration is $150.00.
Francesco, if you could come to the meeting we would love to talk
with you in-depth about your tests and on ways to improve things
and show you the latest improvements.
BTW, you do need to convert all your figures to Illustrator 9.0 as the
plug-in was written for this version but we should indicate that when
any illustrator file is opened in V9.0.x
With regard to WARMreader itself, some folks in the TUGIndia group
have been using it, by creating the .bb files manually, so it is not
essential to have the plug-in to do the labelling.
However, Illustrator is such a nice program to use that having the
plug-in helps to mark the points and create the files more easily.
Thanks again for the extensive testing and the good suggestions.
We will keep you posted on the updates.
Best regards
wendy
==========================================
Wendy G. McKay
Control and Dynamical Systems 107-81
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
(626) 395-4105
(626) 796-8914 fax
wgm at cds.caltech.edu
==========================================
On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Francesco Costanzo wrote:
> Ross (or anybody that can help):
>
> Before we even begin, we want to thank Ross and Wendy for taking the
> time and effort to create WARMreader as a tool for including labels
> in graphics. The comments and questions below are things that we hope
> will help others in using WARMreader and provide feedback to the
> authors so that WARMreader can be improved.
>
> After taking the time to learn about WARMreader, Gary Gray and I have
> the following comments to report:
>
> [1] The help available (paper: W. McKay and R. Moore, "Convenient
> Labeling of Graphics, The WARMreader Way; and the examples available
> on line) does not tell the whole story. For example, we had to look
> in the file warmread.sty to understand that
>
> - the default reference point for text labels is the lower left
> corner of an enlarged text box, as opposed to the center of the box
> (default for math labels).
>
> - there are a multitude of "formats" for .bb files which have to be
> selected using commands of the type
> \let\xyWARMprocess\xyWARMprocessMo
> \let\WARMprocessEPS\WARMprocessMoEPS
>
> - many of the commands that are placed in the preamble of the LaTeX
> files provided as examples by Ross Moore at:
>
> <http://www-texdev.mpce.mq.edu.au/WARM/WARMhome/ILLUS902/>
>
> are not essential for using WARMreader. In this sense, said examples
> are not good examples to get started. We would consider them advanced
> examples provided that a few comments lines be added to explain the
> effect of the WARMreader commands used.
>
> It would be nice if there were some documentation that would get
> people like us (people that have used TeX/LaTeX for years but are not
> interested in deciphering style files) started (i.e., covering the
> bare essentials) with the bare essentials (for example, describing
> why $$ ... $$ (displaymath mode) are used to make sure that the
> imported figure is centered) of the package and then point to
> documentation for more advanced usage.
>
>
> [2] Why is the .bb file format generated by the Marked Objects
> plug-in in Illustrator 9.0.2 different from the default format of .bb
> files? Why have more than one format? With only one format the "\let"
> commands shown above are not necessary.
>
> [3] Instead of the commands
> \let\xyWARMreader\xyWARMreaderMo
> \let\WARMreaderEPS\WARMreaderMoEPS
> placed in the preamble of a LaTeX file to instruct WARDMreader to use
> the Marked Object plug-in syntax in reading the .bb file, why not
> define an option to the warmreader package? That is, something along
> the lines of
> \usepackage[AIMarkedObject]{warmreader}.
>
>
> [4] Depending on how the .bb files is created, the internal numbering
> scheme used by WARMreader to identify the entries in the .bb file has
> NOTHING to do with the "number" labels placed in the .bb file;
>
> [5] Provided that we understand why, for example, !D moves the text
> UP instead of DOWN, would it be difficult to change the internals of
> WARMreader so that the nudging commands become intuitive (e.g., U
> mean UP and D means DOWN)?
>
> COMMENTS on the Marked Objects plug-in for illustrator, which can be found at
>
> <http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~wgm/WARM/reader2001.html>
>
> [1] Would it be possible to contact Tom Ruark (the author of the plug
> in) directly to give him our feedback?
>
> [2] Will the Marked Objects plug-in for Adobe Illustrator 9.0.2 work
> with the forthcoming release of Illustrator for MacOS X?
>
> [3] The way the plug-in renumbers objects is such that if you have
> more than 9 objects, the objects will not appear in a sequential
> order in the resulting .bb file. This is because of the fact that it
> orders objects in the following manner:
> 1
> 10
> 11
> 12
> ...
> 100
> ...
> 2
> 20
> ...
> 200
>
> [4] In the Marked Objects plug-in dialog window there is a pop-up
> menu with the following items:
> - point
> - rectangle
> - polygon
> - ellipse
> - oval
>
> The selection of one of these items seems irrelevant from the
> viewpoint of the .bb file creation. Is there an explanation as to why
> said menu is available?
>
> [5] Why are the "Character" and "Paragraph" pallets always attached
> to the Marked Objects dialog window? We have to keep removing them
> ... and it gets a little tedious after a while.
>
> [6] We have found that with certain files (it appears to only happen
> when we begin with pre-Illustrator 9.x files, although we are not
> 100% sure of this) the bounding box which is reported in the .bb file
> does not have the format %%BoundingBox: 0 0 xxx yyy
> but it has the format
> %%BoundingBox: xx1 yy1 xx2 yy2
> (I hope this is not confusing)
>
> Is this a problem for WARMreader?
>
> [6] We have found that with certain files (it appears to only happen
> when we begin with pre-Illustrator 9.x files, although we are not
> 100% sure of this) the coordinates of some of the marked objects (but
> not all), AT SOME POINT, start looking like (12200, -11971) (meaning
> COMPLETELY OUT OF RANGE WITH RESPECT TO THE FIGURE), although
> appearing in the right position in the Illustrator file. One can
> re-enter the right coordinates of the and "update" the marked object
> record (by using the "Transform" pallet for example). However, after
> saving the file and re-opening it, the updated coordinates go back to
> taking on the absolutely screwed-up values.
>
> We would be more than glad to work with Ross, Wendy, and/or Tom to
> improve these tools and/or fix any of these problems.
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Francesco Costanzo
> Associate Professor
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> Address: Engineering Science and Mechanics Department
> The Pennsylvania State University
> 212 Earth and Engineering Sciences Bldg.
> University Park, PA 16802-1401
> USA
> Phone: (814)863-2030
> Fax: (814)863-7967
> mailto:costanzo at engr.psu.edu
> http://www.esm.psu.edu/HTMLs/Faculty/FCostanzo.html
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
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