[OS X TeX] Circuitry: great package!!

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

	Hello list, here I come with some good news for those who have a 
need for typesetting circuits into LaTeX files but do not have drawing 
tools at hand. In such case the "Circ" package could be considered a God 
send, although still a young one! First of all let me say, if this is 
already common knowledge then please excuse my ignorance and bandwidth 
misuse. But if this package is not widely known then I encourage all who 
see circuits in their sleep to download it and get acquainted with it:

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/generic/diagrams/circ/

	All that needs to be downloaded are the three files:

-) Makefile,
-) circ.dtx,
-) circ.ins

	The Makefile needs some tweaks to reflect the file structure of 
Gerben's (thank you so much!!) TeX installation in order to place the 
needed files in the right places:

INSTDIR=/usr/local/lib/texmf	<-- changed to 
INSTDIR=/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local
CIRCMF=$(INSTDIR)/mf/circ	<-- changed to CIRCMF=$(INSTDIR)/metafont/circ
CIRCTEX=$(INSTDIR)/tex/circ	<-- once the INSTDIR has been set there is 
no need to modify this further
FONTMAP=/usr/lib/texmf/fontname/special.map	<-- changed to 
FONTMAP=$(INSTDIR)/fontname/special.map

	This will make the installation of the circ package compatible with 
a default install of Gerben's packages; anyone who has customized TeX's 
installation will know how to modify the Makefile appropriately. Two 
important things to note about the change in the variables:

-) The CIRCMF change is *extremly* important because the structure 
"$(INSTDIR)/mf/circ" does not follow TeX standards for placing font 
definitions: the standard is "/whatever/metafont/packagename/" (or at 
least that's what I've learned!) but this package uses 
"/whatever/mf/packagename/" and TeX is not configured to look at any 
"mf" directory for font definitions. Once I had everything installed I 
still got font errors when compiling circuits and I had to bang my head 
against the wall to figure this out!

-) Secondly, the FONTMAP change needs an even more manual tweak I 
preferred to perform  because of security reasons. The Makefile looks 
for certain declarations in the "special.map" file and if it doesn't 
find them it tries to append them to it. So to prevent the package from 
modifying a default file (which could be wiped away by an update) I told 
the Makefile to look for it inside the texmf.local tree. But there is no 
special.map file in it so an "mkdir -p 
/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fontname" and a manual copy 
of"texmf/fontname/special.map" to "texmf.local/fontname/" need to take 
place before the Makefile is run. Ironically, after checking all this 
and performing all the changes I realized the declarations the Makefile 
looks for in "special.map" are already there (don't know why), so no 
real appending takes place! Anyhow, it is a recommended practice to keep 
local stuff from modifying default stuff.

	Anyhow, after all these cumbersome modifications are in place we 
are ready to produce and install all the needed files. Just place the 
three downloaded files in a directory (preferably one created for the 
sole purpose of the circ package because plenty of new files will be 
generated) and run "make all" followed by "sudo make install". If you 
want documentation just run "make doc" and grab the "circ.dvi" file. 
After all this run "sudo texhash" and everything should be ready to go! 
As a test of a working installation of the circ package try to compile 
the following text:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[basic,physics]{circ}

\title{My First Circuit!!}
\author{me}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

	Hello, my first circuit!

\begin{center}
\begin{circuit}0
\nl \varU1 $\varepsilon$ u
\- 1 u
\nl \C1 $C$ u
\- 1 u
\- 3 r
\nl \L1 $L$ . r
\- 3 r
\.1
\- 3 d
\nl \C3 $C'$ d
\- 3 d
\.2
\atpin .1
\- 3 r
\nl \L2 $L$ . r
\- 3 r
\- 3 d
\nl \Cvar2 $C$ d
\- 3 d
\- 20 l
\end{circuit}
\end{center}

\end{document}

	This should give you a fair idea of what the package can do, it is 
really great! The generated circuit is very simple and amateur, but all 
that remains from now on is reading "circ.dvi"

	I hope you all like it and that it is as useful for some of you as 
I hope it will be for me. Again, if most of you already have this then 
please excuse my bandwidth misuse.

	Enjoy! My warmest regards to all,...


		Juan.

P.S.: I think I explained all the needed steps to get the show on the 
road, but if I forgot something or anyone has problems getting the 
package to run then don't hesitate to contact me, I'll try to do my best 
helping!

P.P.S.: I have no relation to the package developer, I am just an amazed 
web surfer who stumbled across an interesting LaTeX package! Bye...


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