🚀 go-pugleaf

About two months ago I posted a message to the TEXHAX mailing list for
help on how to include Macintosh generated illustrations in TeX documents
which use the psfig macro package.  Many events have intervened, but I
think that I finally have an answer that is sufficiently correct to
post publicly.  I know of four basic approaches of which I consider
only three effective.  They are:

1) MODIFY THE LASERPREP FILE (Ineffective): Several people reported
success with this method, but I couldn't duplicate their results.  You
can save the PostScript which normally goes to the LaserWriter by
holding down Command-K while requesting printing.  The resulting file
contains a long prologue stored in the LaserPrep file in the system
folder and printing commands generated by the application program.
The basic approach here is to save the prologue separately and edit it
so that it will work correctly with programs like dvi2ps.  
	As I said above, several people told me they had done this
successfully, but I was never able to.  There appears to be a conflict
between what dvi2ps does and what the LaserPrep file does.  Also, we
have a DEC PostScript printer here which cannot accept some of the
LaserWriter/68000-specific commands which appear in the LaserPrep file.

2) USE PS-FROM-MAC (Close but no cigar): PS-from-Mac is a Mac
application which converts MacPaint and MacDraw files into plain
printer-independent PostScript.  It was written by Alec Dunn of the
University of Sydney.  He sells it for a reasonable price.  In
general, it works like a charm.  You run PS-from-Mac on your file and
get a PostScript file which can be included "as is" in a TeX document.
I don't know if it can read MacDraw II files, but I think MacDraw II
can output the old file format, so it shouldn't be much of an issue.
The problem is that MacDraw documents do not come out precisely as you would
expect.  Some of the differences are not important.  For example, the Mac
prints arrowheads with rounded backs.  PS-from-Mac arrowheads are
triangles.  A more important problem is that some objects get
positioned differently than they appear on the screen.  I tried to put
rectangles around individual 10 pt words.  When the screen said the
word looked centered in the box, the printed result had the box
shifted downward.  If you are including a Mac figure in a TeX
document, you are likely to be picky about positioning, so I think
this is a serious problem.

3) CRICKET DRAW PLUS SOME GYRATIONS (Effective but many steps):
Cricket Draw allows you to save a drawing as a PostScript file using
its own printer-independent prologue.  Unfortunately, there is still a
fair amount of massaging required.  The steps are:

1) Create your figure.
2) Turn the entire figure into one group by using the Select All and
	Group menu options.
3) Flip the figure vertically using the Reflect on X menu option.
	This is necessary  because Cricket Draw, like most Mac applications,
	put its image in the fourth quadrant of the Cartesian plane.  If you
	don't flip the figure it comes out upside down.
4) Open a new PostScript window, and use the Generate PostScript menu
	option to create a PS version of your figure.  Save this PS file using
	the "Complete" option, which appends the Cricket Draw prologue.
5) Transfer the file to the UNIX box (use a file transfer program
	in text mode)
6) Determine the bounding box of the figure by using the program bbfig
	which is part of the dvi2ps distribution.
7) Edit the PS file to make the Bounding Box comment correct. If you
	figure include text, you must also change some font names.  
	For some reason, Cricket Draw uses  names like \_______Symbol 
	for the fonts.  If you strip off the non-printing part of the 
	font names, things will work.  Obviously, this could be done by 
	a simple sed script.
8) You are now ready to go.  Just include the file in your TeX document  
	using psfig.

Well, this series of steps is a pain, but frankly, most of it doesn't
take that long.  Also, Cricket Draw is not very expensive and is
designed for precisely the kind of drawing you are likely to want in a
figure in a paper.

4) USE ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR (Effective and easy):  Adobe Illustrator
files are PostScript files.  You construct your figure and save it.
There is already a Bounding Box comment, so you just transfer the file
to the UNIX box and include it in the TeX file.  Wait a minute.  One
trivial problem.  I don't have a copy of Illustrator '88 available,
but our plain Illustrator files have a Bounding Box comment that looks like
	%%BoundingBox:91 -394 272 -235
when psfig expects a space after the colon, as in
	%%BoundingBox: 91 -394 272 -235
Otherwise, it works like a charm.  My complaint with Illustrator is
that it is primarily intended for graphic artists, which I am not.  As
a result, there is no round-corner rectangle (of which I am quite
fond) and line-drawing and spline-drawing use the same tool, which I
find confusing.  Finally, Illustrator costs about twice as much as
Cricket Draw.


CONCLUSION:  For me, only Cricket Draw and Illustrator are acceptable
solutions.  I haven't been able to get the LaserPrep solution to work
at all.  PS-from-Mac is a good idea but is just inaccurate enough to
require multiple passes to get a figure right.

Cricket Draw presents a cheap solution that requires some elbow-grease.
I think that most of the file editing on the UNIX box can be automated, but
a run of bbfig will always be required.

Illustrator files require almost no postprocessing but it is an
expensive program and may not be as easy for you to use as Cricket Draw.

Ethan Munson
munson@renoir.berkeley.edu
...ucbvax!renoir!munson

My thanks to Steve Strickland for coming up with the Cricket Draw
method and to Glenn Reid of Adobe for getting it through my thick head
that Illustrator would work just fine.