[tex-eplain] Drawing leaders using \gridcommdiag macro

[John culleton]

On
>
> I blew the dust off "The LaTeX Graphics Companion", and am
> reading the chapter on PSTricks.  The only firm conclusion
> I've drawn so far is that whoever wrote this chapter and
> the guy who wrote the book of REVELATIONS attended the same
> course in creative writing...come to think of it so did Knuth,
> Kernighan, Norvig, and Von Neumann.  Perhaps Seminal works 501
> with keynote speaker St John the Divine.
>
> There's got to be a simpler way to chuck a box around some text
> and point to it with a couple of arrows and let TeX look after
> details.
>
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Well, since you are on the eplain list perhaps a LaTeX book is not what you 
need.  The Pstricks manual and its addendum (betadoc) describe what you may 
want pretty well.  (I also use the documentation to the pst-fill sub-macro 
package from time to time.) If you would describe your needs in a bit more 
detail I could perhaps suggest the macro(s)  that would help. There is also a 
pstricks mailing list. 

Just by way of example try the following complete plain TeX program (betadoc 
p14):

\input pstricks
\input pst-node
\font\Huge cmss10 at 20pt

%%%%%%%End preliminaries -- working code follows
\rnode{a}{\psframebox{\Huge A loop}}
\ncloop[angleB=180, loopsize=1,arm=.5,linearc=.2]{->}{a}{a}
%%%%%%%

\bye

The \rnode statement  creates a box labelled node ``a'' that contains the 20 
point text ``A Loop''. 

\ncloop {->}{a}{a} creates an arrow that connects  node ``a'' to itself. The  
parameters between the [ and ]  fine tune the shape of the looped arrow. 

The documentation is full of worked examples like the above.  I generally 
take an example similar to what I want, get it working, then tweak the 
parameters and text to customize it to my needs. 

Try it, you'll like it! But read the real docs, not ``The LaTeX Companion.''
After all, an allergy to LaTeX is what brings us to the eplain list :-)

John Culleton