Re: PPCHTEX with PSTricks option

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

On 7-5-2010 8:12, Helge Kruse wrote:
> Am 07.05.2010 13:04, schrieb Alan BRASLAU:
>> On Friday 07 May 2010 10:23:20 Hans Hagen wrote:
>>> On 7-5-2010 9:12, Alan BRASLAU wrote:
>>> indeed the mkiv reimplementation will not be backported to latex as it
>>> involved a combination of tex, lua and mp now and is integrated into the
>>> context kernel (we have math in the kernel so why not chemistry)
>
> So PPCHTEX is frozen for LaTeX?

apart from bug fixes (and/or if someone submits more drawing definitions)

in fact, as we move on to luatex, the context version for pdftex / xetex 
is frozen as well

>> Indeed, the problem is that I tried to run the pstricks option
>> under pdflatex, which, of course, does not work!
> The pictex output is not convincing, so I hoped the PSTricks output
> would gave better result. In general it works, but the diagonal bonds
> are too long. I Hoped that this could be fixed.

if we kno wwhere the problem sits it will of course be solved, however 
as i don't run latex i cannot see what goes wrong

> Skimming the ppchtex.noc I found that metapost is one possible output
> "driver". I also found a documentation for metapost. But I don't see how
> I can make PPCHTEX work with metapost in LaTeX. I even don't know if
> metapost can be used in LaTeX as in ConTeXt.

in context mkii metapost support has been integrated for quite some time 
and in context mkiv it can be processed without noticing so there 
ppchtex uses even more metapost (which is why there are also some extras)

>> As I (almost) never use LaTeX anymore (and certainly never dvips)
>> I had forgotten about this.
>>
>> I guess that I have become far too accustomed to ConTeXt and,
>> in particular, mkiv.
>>
>> As to the original post, it yields acceptable results. The new ppchtex
>> in mkiv core is an improvement and, as Hans confirms, will not be
>> backported
>> to laTeX. This could be one of many good reasons to switch from LaTeX to
>> ConTeXt!
> Well I am curious and I would evaluate ConTeXt. I think that
> http://www.pragma-ade.com/ will be a good starting point to do that.
> Unfortunately I did not found "How to install ConTeXt". Can this be done
> by adding some packages in MiKTeX 2.8? Probably a silly question...

best start with installing the so called minimals (from 
contextgarden.net) which will give you an independent tree that does not 
interfere with anything else

btw, an easy test is:

\starttext

\startTEXpage

... some chemical ...

\stopTEXpage

\stoptext

which will give you a graphic that you then can include in a latex doc

Hans

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