[pstricks] complaint

[Katalin Fried]

I have used Pstricks for decades now and created thousands of nice drawings
for my students, for example. I had a hard time setting up a convenient
environment for Pstricks under PDFLaTeX. I even wrote some macros for
finding intersections of lines/circles (honestly speaking, it is better
than pst-intersect) I have written a program to create 3D drawings (before
I met 3D-vue).

I'd been thinking of switching to TiKX, as it is so easy to use with any
form of LaTeX but I found that TiKZ is nowhere near the simplicity (yet
precision) of PsTricks, so I do not wish to change.

Not long ago, I had to install a new version of MikTeX on my computer. and
was shocked to find that my files with Pstricks drawings did not compile.

I read with great distress that Pstricks can no longer be used under
PDFLaTeX  .
(https://tug.org/PSTricks/main.cgi/)

I really would like to know why Pstricks with PDFLaTeX had to be flushed
down the toilet.

Then, I started to modify Pstricks to my liking.
To avoid the error message undefined control sequence \ifPSTlualatex
I put a line in it: \newif\ifPSTlualatex
(Honestly, I don't know where this `if' should have been defined.)
And changed some other things as well.
Further sty and tex files needed some minor adjustments, but by now I have
a conflict with the xcolor package only, and since these are warnings only,
I can live with them for now. (Later, when I'll have more time, I will
alter the xcolor package as well.)

Now I use PdfLaTeX with my modified Pstricks and it works more or less fine.
However, I am very much afraid that in the next update, there will be such
severe changes that I won't be able to use Pstricks as is. Still, I will
always try to return to the roots.
But I would be much happier if it was done officially. So please,
reimplement Pstricks in such a way that it can be used with PdfLaTeX.

Best, Katalin Fried
See: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-1/tb86fried.pdf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://tug.org/pipermail/pstricks/attachments/20230623/61055fe1/attachment.htm>