[pdftex] Re: PdfTeX and SVG graphics

[John Culleton]

On Saturday 13 November 2004 23:35, Ben Crowell wrote:
> >What kind of graphics are you producing, XY charts, flowcharts, binary
> >trees, technical diagrams?  Depending on your needs one or the other of
> >these packages could fit.
>
> I have about 700 preexisting figures, used in a series of physics
> textbooks. I originally did them in Adobe Illustrator, and am now trying
> to get so I I can do all the editing of them in open-source software.
> I'm now at the point where my only reason for maintaining a Mac is to
> run Illustrator.
>
Given your situation,  redrawing of what you have is probably impractical. 
So for the short term I suggest that bitmapped illustrations aren't all 
that bad. Taking he example of the original Computer Modern (bitmapped) 
fonts: they look lousy in Adobe Acrobat Reader, but one doesn't print 
books from screenshots. On paper the bitmapped fonts look just fine. 
Similarly a bitmapped conversion of your current diagrams probably will 
look fine in the finished text, assuming the conversion is done properly. 

For future work you will of course want to use something that produces 
vector formats, ultimately in pdf format.  The Context macros offer two 
avenues. First there are the Metafun extensions to the Metapost package. 
I'm assured that this is all in the world of vector graphics. Context also 
has a routine that allows the use of  PSTricks.  There is of course much 
scurrying around behind the scenes to make this essentially PostScript 
package work in a pdftex environment, but it does work. There are other 
tools that can be called upon. The Eplain macros for Plain TeX have 
extensions for commutative diagrams for example. I find some of the 
features of the TeXsis macros handy particularly for building tables.

In the world of pdfLaTeX there is the pdftricks package. I don't like to 
work in LaTeX because it is too wordy and too restrictive for my tastes, 
but most TeXers disagree. 

There is this annoyance: if plain pdftex is set up to produce pdf output 
then packages like PSTricks won't work and if pdftex is set up to produce 
dvi output then some of the added graphics inclusion features won't work. 
Someday I will search out some workarounds.  

-- 
John Culleton

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