[9fans] pic generators?

[9fans] pic generators?

[Sam]

I'm going to show my age here, but what are
the standard set of programs used to generate,
say, pic format images for insertion into
papers?  I'm trying to create some figures
for a document and I'm not quite certain
where to look.

Cheers,

Sam

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

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xfig (linux and others) generates pic, if you don't want
to write pic yourself.

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From: Sam <sah@softcardsystems.com>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: [9fans] pic generators?
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 09:59:53 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0302050951100.17267-100000@athena>

I'm going to show my age here, but what are
the standard set of programs used to generate,
say, pic format images for insertion into
papers?  I'm trying to create some figures
for a document and I'm not quite certain
where to look.

Cheers,

Sam

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Sam]

...

So the figures in, say, the il paper were written by hand?

I don't mind learning pic if it was designed to be human
writable.  I just need to be told that.

:)

On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Fco.J.Ballesteros wrote:

> xfig (linux and others) generates pic, if you don't want
> to write pic yourself.
>

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Fco.J.Ballesteros]

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I wrote pic by hand a few months ago for the very first time.
It's not hard to learn.
	http://plan9.escet.urjc.es/sys/doc/pic.ps
was a great help.

hth

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From: Sam <sah@softcardsystems.com>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] pic generators?
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 10:11:57 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0302051010000.17267-100000@athena>

...

So the figures in, say, the il paper were written by hand?

I don't mind learning pic if it was designed to be human
writable.  I just need to be told that.

:)

On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Fco.J.Ballesteros wrote:

> xfig (linux and others) generates pic, if you don't want
> to write pic yourself.
>

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Boyd Roberts]

pic isn't that hard to learn, but it may become difficult to
maintain the pic description as the complexity of the
diagram increases.

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Charles Forsyth]

each time i set out to use cip/art/xpic/... i end up
deciding that it was all a big mistake,
life's too short, write the pic myself
(or generate it from another notation) in a fraction
of the time i've already spent,
and get on with what remains of my life.

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Russ Cox]

all the diagrams in /sys/doc/fossil.ps were
drawn with pic, by hand.  the [ ] block construction
is your friend.

if you're drawing things with a regular structure,
you often get better results with pic by hand than with
something like art.  you can make sure the regular
structure is expressed exactly.

on the other hand, if you're trying to draw figure 1
or the il network state diagram, art might be more
helpful.

art is in /n/sources/contrib/art.

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[William Josephson]

On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 10:11:57AM -0500, Sam wrote:
> So the figures in, say, the il paper were written by hand?
>
> I don't mind learning pic if it was designed to be human
> writable.  I just need to be told that.

It depends upon how complicated the diagram is.
Asking the local guru for sample macros is always
a good idea.  In my experience, xfig produces
inferior diagrams; others may be more adept with
it, though.

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Sam wrote:
> I don't mind learning pic if it was designed to be human
> writable.  I just need to be told that.

Pic's language is pretty easy to learn.  If you have
access to cip or xcip they were the original GUIs for
laying out pic images.  There are reports that xfig
can output in cip format.  Many preprocessors output
pic files (e.g. grap, dag, chem).  Grap is fairly
general, while dag (later dotty et al.) lays out
graph structures and chem formats molecular diagrams.
These can exploit pic's programmability, which isn't
quite as powerful as PostScript but is much easier to
use.

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[David Butler]

In the second "release" there is a program called "art" that creates "pic"
output.

(One of these days I'll get enough time to catch up with fourth release.
Each
time I try to put it under load it crashes and I haven't had time to merge
my
second "release" changes into it.)

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam" <sah@softcardsystems.com>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 8:59 AM
Subject: [9fans] pic generators?


> I'm going to show my age here, but what are
> the standard set of programs used to generate,
> say, pic format images for insertion into
> papers?  I'm trying to create some figures
> for a document and I'm not quite certain
> where to look.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sam
>
>

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Jon Snader]

Rich Stevens used raw pic for all his books.  He posted some interesting
examples of how he used it at <http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/troff.html>
along with the pic macros that he used.

In addition to the excellent groff pic manual that Eric Raymond wrote,
you might also want to look at the chapter on pic in _Unix Text Processing_.
You can find (the recreated) UTP at <http://www.alltel.net/~kollar/utp/>.

Jon Snader

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Aharon Robbins]

In article <20030205163158.GA52524@ix.netcom.com>,
Jon Snader <9fans@cse.psu.edu> wrote:
>Rich Stevens used raw pic for all his books.  He posted some interesting
>examples of how he used it at <http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/troff.html>
>along with the pic macros that he used.
>
>In addition to the excellent groff pic manual that Eric Raymond wrote,
>you might also want to look at the chapter on pic in _Unix Text Processing_.
>You can find (the recreated) UTP at <http://www.alltel.net/~kollar/utp/>.
>
>Jon Snader

Since we're at it, there's also www.troff.org, which has a pointer to the
recreated Unix Text Processing.  The scanned bitmaps of the original are
available from O'Reilly.

That UTP is back from the dead is a wonderful development, at least for
dinosaurs like me.

Arnold
--
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins --- Pioneer Consulting Ltd.	arnold@skeeve.com
P.O. Box 354		Home Phone: +972  8 979-0381	Fax: +1 928 569 9018
Nof Ayalon		Cell Phone: +972 51  297-545
D.N. Shimshon 99785	ISRAEL

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

> Since we're at it, there's also www.troff.org, which has a pointer to
> the recreated Unix Text Processing.  The scanned bitmaps of the
> original are available from O'Reilly.

    http://troff.org/books.html#ora

Cheers,

--
Ralph Corderoy.      http://inputplus.co.uk/ralph/     http://troff.org/

[9fans] troff book (was: pic generators?)

[Sam]

Interesting.

Now that this page is brought to my attention, I realize
that the book I've been learning my troff from isn't in
the list.  I picked it up on Ebay from a UK bookseller.
It's titled _Unix System Document Processing Guide_ and
has no authors listed.  The publisher is Western Electric.

Anyone heard of this one?  The writing is quite good,
and rather comical at times.

On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > Since we're at it, there's also www.troff.org, which has a pointer to
> > the recreated Unix Text Processing.  The scanned bitmaps of the
> > original are available from O'Reilly.
>
>     http://troff.org/books.html#ora
>
> Cheers,
>
>

Re: [9fans] troff book (was: pic generators?)

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Sam,

> Now that this page is brought to my attention, I realize that the book
> I've been learning my troff from isn't in the list.  I picked it up on
> Ebay from a UK bookseller.  It's titled _Unix System Document
> Processing Guide_ and has no authors listed.  The publisher is Western
> Electric.
>
> Anyone heard of this one?  The writing is quite good, and rather
> comical at times.

I'll search for more details on it and add it in when I do the next
batch update.

Thanks for the pointer.

Cheers,

--
Ralph Corderoy.      http://inputplus.co.uk/ralph/     http://troff.org/

Re: [9fans] pic generators?

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> I'm going to show my age here, but what are
> the standard set of programs used to generate,
> say, pic format images for insertion into
> papers?  I'm trying to create some figures
> for a document and I'm not quite certain
> where to look.

Pic is a powerful language, but it is easy to learn and use.  As
others have mentioned, it is always easier to do pic by hand.  These
guidelines help me:

* know what it is you want to draw.  Do it by hand first
so you have a pretty good idea how you want to lay it out.
* if there is a natural flow order, use it.
* define things in []; Label the objects (e.g. A: box).
* use relative coordinates (e.g.  .n, .e, .w, .s) and lengths (e.g.
1/2 of the way between) in reference to labeled objects;
it helps when you move things around.

There are lots of examples.   Richard Stevens did a tutorial paper that
you can find with google. Also I think the macros from one of his
books (I think UNIX Network Programming) could be found.