Subject: categories: RE: graphics

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 15:48:28 PST

Hi all,

Robert suggested TeXCad for people who use Windows. I haven't used this
system, so cannot comment, but here are my 2 cents worth, just in case...

I believe that some day we will be able to draw in the computer as easily
as we do in a piece of paper. But meanwhile, you can draw your diagrams in
pieces of paper and use ScanScribe (overview at)
http://www.parc.com/spl/groups/pda/scanscribe/index.html
to make them digital.
They won't look as neat as our latex ones, directly. So I, for one, won't
be giving up on my latex diagrams quite yet. But you can read about
possible uses of ScanScribe for *manipulating* category theory diagrams in

http://www.parc.com/saund/papers/diagrams-poster-ss-abstract.html

Also if you haven't yet invested the time into getting your latex (xypic
or other) in place, maybe these diagrams will be good enough for you, I
don't know.

Moreover, Eric Saund the creator of ScanScribe is a very helpful computer
scientist, who usually likes to have users and tend to be glad to assist
them, whenever necessary. In particular, I think he has worked with
flowchart diagrams (which might have been the beginning of this thread, I
don't remember.)

Best,
Valeria

Dr Valeria de Paiva
PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Road
PAlo Alto
CA 94304 USA

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Seely [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 8:44 AM
To: Categories List
Subject: Re: categories: Re: graphics

Using picture mode is very convenient when things aren't too complicated, and editing picture mode code is always (well, almost always) easier than redoing mouse based drawing.  But the combination of a mouse-based drawing to generate picture mode code, then editing that for fine-tuning is often helpful.  For those who are condemned to the Windows framework, let me recommend TeXCad - originally written by G Horn (it was then part of the emtex distribution), currently maintained by Gautier de Montmollin <http://homepage.sunrise.ch/mysunrise/gdm/texcad.htm>.  Like Xfig, it creates picture mode code from your mouse-based drawing.  The two programs are not completely similar (I prefer TeXCad, but others may differ!), but if you're using Windows, give it a try.

-= rags =-

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Vaughan Pratt wrote:

> Xfig is pretty convenient, but one can get a tad impatient with xfig's
> imprecision after a while.

-- 
<[email-masked]>
<www.math.mcgill.ca/rags>