[OS X TeX] pdf the size of printed text?

[Maarten Sneep]

On 5-okt-2006, at 1:28, Ross Moore wrote:

>> Of course, my method is limited to a single equation, but if you  
>> keep in mind what the destination most likely is (a Keynote  
>> presentation), then that isn't much of a limitation. If I need a  
>> latex equation in another latex document, I'll use \input, if the  
>> need arises.
>
> For multiline equation environments you'll need nested boxes.
> e.g. something like this should work:
>
>  \setbox\shipoutbox=\hbox{\setlength{\hsize}{8cm}\vbox{%
>    \setlength{\textwidth}{\hsize}%
>    \begin{align*}
>      ... aligned mathematics ...
>    \end{align*}
>   }%  close the \vbox
>  }%  close the \hbox
>
> That 8cm  value can be whatever you want; you have to set it
> manually, because a display always takes the full typesetting width.
>
> Also, that \textwidth may need to be \columnwidth or \linewidth  
> instead,
> depending upon what documentclass and LaTeX packages you are using.

Thanks, it remains tricky, no matter what you do I guess. Just a  
thought: can a minipage environment be used in this way (in an  
attempt to create more "readable" code (for some definitions of  
readable).

>> Ross, can you phrase the advantage of this code over mine?
>
> Here are a few things that spring to mind:
>
> *  The shell-scripts are not needed, so there's also no need to
> write values out to the log-file.

The values that are written in the log file allow supporting  
applications to place the equation in its destination with the  
correct baseline offset. Still, since this can be done inexpensively  
from within pdflatex, it doesn't add that much overhead.

> *  This coding can be used many times within the same document,
> for images of different sizes. Thus there's no need to
> adjust the geometry --- which affects many more things
> than what is necessary for the desired results.
>
> *  It doesn't rely upon LaTeX's complicated \output  routine
> to shipout the images, after adding header/footer/floats etc.

That is a time saver.

> Indeed, it can be easily wrapped into a macro,
> called \shipoutimage say, that helps to keep your
> source document nice and neat.

It is probably the local time that affects me, but with what method  
could something like that be practical. I'd think an environment  
would be nice as a user interface, but that might be a hard one to  
pull off. Any ideas?

Maarten
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