[pdftex] Replacement for psframebox?

[John R. Culleton]

On Tuesday 15 November 2005 11:01 am, Geoffrey Alan Washburn wrote:
> John R. Culleton wrote:
> > AFAIK You can use pstricks in pdftex if you specify dvi output,
> > and then go through two extra steps (dvips followed by ps2pdf) to
> > create the pdf file. Possibly the pdftricks package would apply
> > also; I have never used it.
> >
> > I am of course referring to pdftex and not pdflatex. What goes on
> > in pdflatex I don't know.
>
>     Right, but then I would need to handle all of the font expansions by
> hand.
>
>     I briefly looked at the pdftricks package and it sounded like a
> rather horrible hack, and I don't really need all of pstricks anyway, I
> just need a replacement for \psframebox.

There is also Context, another TeX variant that uses pdftex as
its engine. It has framed boxes built in. It also will access
Metapost constructs through a mechanism called Metafun. Finally
it will actually use Pstricks through a multiple run process.

I know that Context does hanging punctuation. I understand that it
also does the font expansion bit, The commands are there. I
haven't used font expansion with Context yet. 

This is a bit far afield from your immediate need, since you are
talking about I presume a LaTeX document.  But LaTeX users who
have special needs may want to look into Context as a long term
replacement for the more familiar LaTeX variant. 

John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters