From help-request at octave dot org Thu Feb  3 14:23:56 2005
Subject: Re: Making graphic available for Latex ( on Mac)
From: Vic Norton <vic at norton dot name>
To: help at octave dot org
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:28:32 -0500

xfig and transfig can both be ported to a Mac from darwinports:
    vic$ port search xfig
    xfig            graphics/xfig   3.2.4
       Facility for Interactive Generation of figures under X11
    vic$ port search transfig
    transfig        print/transfig  3.2.4
       Tools to convert Xfig's .fig files
I haven't done it, but the process should be pretty straightforward.

Regards,

Vic

At 1:24 PM -0600 2/3/05, Quentin Spencer wrote:
>Henry F. Mollet wrote:
>
>>LaTeX - A document preparation system
>>My question: If I had LaTex installed on my iMac with OS 10.2.8 would it
>>take the place of MSWord X for producing my final document for submission to
>>scientific journal. Or on my next Mac when Tiger comes out, LaTeX can take
>>the place of MSWord and I won't need it at all?
>>
>Definitely. I have never used Word for submitting to journals. For 
>an example of what is possible, you can look at my PhD dissertation, 
>which was completely generated using LaTeX:
>http://patriot.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd378.pdf
>All simulations were done in octave, and all plots were generated 
>using octave/gnuplot. In order to put math expressions in the plot, 
>I usually output my plots to xfig format (see the gnuplot 
>documentation for more), and then use xfig and transfig (this 
>process is automated using makefiles) to generate eps files (other 
>ways of doing this have been covered recently on this list). I don't 
>know whether xfig and transfig are readily available for Mac without 
>building it yourself (which apparently is not necessarily 
>straightforward).
>
>In my experience, LaTeX has a bit of a steep learning curve, but GUI 
>interfaces like LyX now exist which make the process more like a 
>word processor (but still not exactly the same). However, no other 
>program does mathematical typesetting as well as LaTeX (in addition 
>to the fact that you pointed out that MS still doesn't understand 
>anybody's vector graphics formats other than their own). When I 
>review papers by other authors, I can instantly tell which authors 
>used LaTeX and which used Word from the ugly looking equations.
>
>-Quentin



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