Drawing with TeX

There are many packages to do pictures in (La)TeX itself (rather than importing graphics created externally), ranging from simple use of LaTeX picture environment, through enhancements like epic, to sophisticated (but slow) drawing with PiCTeX. Depending on your type of drawing, and setup, here are a few systems you may consider:

• pict2e; this was advertised in the LaTeX manual, but didn't appear for nearly ten years after publication of the book! It removes all the petty niggles that surround the use of the picture environment. It therefore suffers only from the rather eccentric drawing language of the environment, and is a far more useful tool than the environment itself has ever been.
• pstricks; this gives you access to all the power of PostScript from TeX itself, by sophisticated use of \special commands. The \specials are by default specific to dvips, but VTeX (both in its commercial and in its free versions) understands them. PDFTeX users may use pdftricks, which (like epstopdf - see PDFLaTeX graphics) generates PDF files on the fly from pstricks commands. The documentation is good (you may browse it via the pstricks page on the TUG web site), and another extremely valuable web site lists supporting packages (for various specialised drawing operations) and many enticing examples. There is also a mailing list (pstricks@tug.org) which you may join, or you may just browse the list archives.
• MetaPost; you liked Metafont, but never got to grips with font files? Try MetaPost - all the power of Metafont, but it generates PostScript figures; MetaPost is nowadays part of most serious (La)TeX distributions. Knuth uses it for all his work...
• Mfpic; you liked Metafont, but can't understand the language? The package makes up Metafont or MetaPost code for you within using familiar-looking TeX macros. Not quite the full power of Metafont, but a friendlier interface.
• You liked PiCTeX but don't have enough memory or time? Look at Eitan Gurari's dratex, which is as powerful as most other TeX drawing packages, but is an entirely new implementation, which is not as hard on memory, is much more readable (and is fully documented).

dratex.sty

graphics/dratex (zip, browse)

mfpic

graphics/mfpic (zip, browse)

pdftricks.sty

macros/latex/contrib/pdftricks (zip, browse)

pict2e.sty

macros/latex/contrib/pict2e (zip, browse)

pstricks

graphics/pstricks (zip, browse)

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