[pstricks] thanks, and recommend?

[Doug Mounce]

Dear All, thanks for the continuing help and examples on this mailing 
list.  I've included a simple control diagram in-case anyone has a use 
for it, but I was interested in any general discussion about the 
advantages and disadvantages between pstricks and drawing in the LaTeX 
picture environment.

My boss was inspired by my drawings, but not inclined to closely listen 
to my rough idea about the advantage in using pstricks.  Instead, he 
designed a picture environment where he displays a gray-scale grid in 
the background to help identify where to put the lines and circles.  I 
said that pstricks does some of the spacing in a manner more consistent 
with how LaTeX is supposed to manage layout, but I had to admit that 
not having a .dvi file was a drawback.

As the group considers what procedure to adopt, what general categories 
should I identify for consideration?  The plot functions in pstricks 
seem ideal for all the work we generate in LabVIEW, Matlab and 
Mathematica, for example.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, regards, Doug Mounce

PS - cool POV-Ray movies on our website if anyone likes that sort of 
thing...

http://courses.washington.edu/goodall/MRFM/


simple control diagram example:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{pst-node}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}

\begin{psmatrix}[rowsep=.5cm,colsep=0.8cm]
&	Process Noise	&	&	Measurement Noise	\\
&	&		&	&	&			\\
Force Signal & \pscirclebox{+} & \psframebox{G(s)} & \pscirclebox{+} & 
Output	\\
&	&	Cantilever
\psset{arrows=->,nodesep=5pt}
\ncline{->}{1,2}{3,2}<{w}
\ncline{->}{3,1}{3,2}_{f}
\ncline{->}{3,2}{3,3}^{u}
\ncline{->}{3,3}{3,4}^{Motion x}
\ncline{->}{1,4}{3,4}>{v}
\ncline{->}{3,4}{3,5}_{y}

\end{psmatrix}

\vspace{1cm}

$
y(s) = G(s)[f(s)+w(s)]+v(s)
$

\end{center}

\end{document}