Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Graphviz and Inkscape for vector drawings

I have been using xfig for years for drawing vector drawings. Recently, I got interested in two software for my drawing needs - Graphviz and Inkscape.

Graphviz is awesome when it comes to generating graphs from a program. An awesome tool for automation. I found Graphviz also useful when you want a quick graph, you don't have much time and you don't care about the exact layout. Being a lazy person I am, Graphviz adds nicely to my toolkits for lazy person - Perl, Gnuplot, Image Magick, and Graphviz. Write a quick text file describing the graph, run the 'dot' command of Graphviz package and you get a nice graph.

Inkscape looks good, but it is giving me some tough time. When I compare it with xfig, I can say that although xfig is less ambitious, but it is complete and stable. Inkscape is neither complete nor stable. But it is very ambitious and has lot of features. I am still learning my way around in Inkscape. Here are some resources:
    1. Tutorials
    2. A Quick Guide to Inkscape - this is really a very good guide.
    3. Inkscape: A guide to a vector drawing program (html version of the book)
Inkscape seems to be quite popular, so I am going to stick with it for a while and hopefully I don't have to go back to xfig. As I can envision, my main use of Inkscape would be to use it to create technical drawings for publishing, because for everything else GIMP is there. In the worst case, probably I have to edit the SVG file manually if I couldn't find a way to do something in Inkscape.

The reason I like Inkscape over xfig is because
  • it does not introduce any new format and uses existing SVG format which seems a better choice in long term - more compatibility with other apps.
  • it has much more updated UI which is easier on eyes.
  • it has lot of features and many more things can be done.

Monday, November 16, 2009

LatexEditor DVI viewer not working

I have installed LatexEditor (LEd) on Windows 7 and its in-built DVI viewer does not work. I uninstalled LEd, ghosscript, and MikTex and reinstalled them, but that didn't help.

I tried suggestions from the following links:
http://www.latexeditor.org/download_main.html
http://www.latexeditor.org/how_to_start.html

but couldn't make DVI viewer working. There does not seem to be much information on Internet about LEd.

The cross-jumping between TEX file and the DVI file is the coolest feature of LEd, and it is not working.

I don't have time to do any more investigations, but I might try on my Windows XP box.

Update:
It worked for me!!!

Here is what I did:
After suggestion from ImAn, I went to the LED forum and checked the DVI Viewer section. This post helped me:
LEd 0.52/MikTeX 2.7-I still can't see anything in DVI previe

1. I copied "dvi_miktex27.dll" in "miktex\bin" directory
C:\Program Files>copy LEd\dvi_miktex27.dll "MiKTeX 2.8\miktex\bin"
1 file(s) copied.
2. I put "dvi_miktex27.dll" in "font searching library"