LaTeX Picture Environment

Supported device

This driver creates a text file containing commands for drawing in the LaTeX picture environment, bracketted by \begin{picture} and \end{picture}. The file can be included in a LaTeX document.

If you have the option of including a PostScript file in your LaTeX document, then that will usually give much better results than using this driver, which has very limited capabilities.

Device type code

/LATEX

Default file name

pgplot.tex

Default view surface dimensions

The default picture size is 6 inches by 6 inches (which corresponds to 1728×1728 units where a unit is 0.25pt = 1/288 inch). The picture size can be changed by using PGPAP in the PGPLOT program.

Resolution

The driver rounds coordinates to multiples of 0.25pt (1/288 inch).

Color capability

None.

Obtaining hardcopy

Embed the file in a LaTeX document and use the normal LaTeX tools to process it, e.g.,

\documentstyle{article}
\begin{document}
\input pgplot.tex
\end{document}

Limitations

The LaTeX picture environment has a very limited set of primitives. In particular, diagonal lines must be composed out of dots. This can lead to very large files. For some graphs (especially with a lot of shaded areas), the capacity of many LaTeX systems can easily be exceeded.

Author

Originally written by Grant McIntosh (gmcint@relay.drev.dnd.ca), February 1995.