[pstricks] complaint

[Herbert Voss]

Am 23.06.23 um 14:10 schrieb 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).


PSTricks _never_ worked _directly_ with pdflatex! It uses PostScript 
specials which
cannot be used with pdflatex. Only with some tricks, listed on the webpage,
you can use pdflatex.

>
> 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.

Instead of a long complain you should show an example which runs in the
past with _pdflatex_!

Herbert

>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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