Pgf/TikZ was meant to fill the gap created when moving from latex to
pdflatex. However, because Pgf/TikZ does not natively use EPS, the
mathematics it can do are severely limited. For example, you may be able
to repeat an operation a finite number of times (e.g., automatically
generating several instances of a graphic), but you will be unable to
specify the shape of a curve using a function. Of course, you can give
it a set of points generated by another program (e.g., gnuplot); you
just can't do such things on the fly.
Additionally, PSTricks already has a wide set of support packages
available for different application areas (e.g., electronic circuits,
flow charts, 3D, etc.). Having said that, Pgf/TikZ has a growing and
contributing audience, and so it is catching up.
My biggest frustration with Pgf/TikZ is that it creates unneeded
segmentation in the LaTeX audience. PSTricks and EPS graphics provide a
rich set of tools that Pgf/TikZ will always lag behind. Unfortunately,
because of the complications involved in converting from EPS-friendly
graphics to PDF-friendly graphics (and vice versa), there are a lot of
people who just want a PDF-native LaTeX solution. That's how Pgf/TikZ
got started. I can't really blame them and their audience. After all,
the people responsible for the classical LaTeX methods can sometimes be
mean and stubborn; it's no surprise that side efforts to smooth out
LaTeX rough edges become very popular with a wider LaTeX audience.
So, I guess I'm saying that you should use whatever you're most
comfortable with. Your graphics will never be as integrated with
Pgf/TikZ as they could be with PSTricks; however, you won't have to
worry about converting back and forth between the EPS world and the PDF
world.
--Ted
On 07/06/2010 03:03 AM, Gianluca Meneghello wrote:
> Thanks Ted for your comments... I'm learning tikz and pgf: they seem
> to work fine with pdflatex and, to my opinion, produces very nice
> graphics. But I have no idea on whether it can solve differential
> equations on the fly --- but I know it uses gnuplot in order to do the
> math, and then import the data. Any comment on how does it compare
> with PStricks?
>
> Thanks again
>
> gianluca
>
> On 5 July 2010 17:48, Ted Pavlic<t...@tedpavlic.com> wrote:
>>> That's good because as far as I know compiling in dvi does not allow
>>> to use \includefigures using pdf files, right? So it was not an
>>> option!
>>
>> Using latex (as opposed to pdflatex) means all of your graphics have
>> to be EPS files. You can use pdflatex to include PDF, PNG, JPG, or
>> GIF, but pdflatex will not include EPS files. A major downside of not
>> being able to use EPS natively is that you lose out on all of the
>> great features of EPS. For example, PSTricks (a LaTeX drawing package)
>> can do very advanced things because it leverages the power of EPS. In
>> particular, PSTricks can do math within graphics that lets you (for
>> example) solve differential equations during the compilation of your
>> document.
>>
>> [ Personally, I hate including MATLAB figures within a nicely
>> formatted LaTeX document. Even though MATLAB has some crude
>> LaTeX/Computer-Modern-font support that you can put into figs, the
>> figures always make a nice document look worse. An old officemate of
>> mine would use the psfrag package (which also requires using EPS) to
>> solve this problem. MATLAB puts dummy symbols throughout the fig, and
>> psfrag can replace them on-the-fly with text rendered from the
>> document. However, the graphics themselves still lack the smooth look
>> that LaTeX provides. So I don't even generate figs from MATLAB; I have
>> MATLAB export data and use PSTricks to plot that data natively within
>> LaTeX. The result is a document without seems. ]
>>
>> There are several packages that allow you to include pdflatex-friendly
>> files in latex (and probably vice versa). They essentially run a small
>> pass of pdflatex or a converter program to generate EPS files from the
>> PDF's you want to include. The packages can actually do this fairly
>> automatically. I take a different route because I eschew using
>> pdflatex. I have Makefiles that will automatically generate EPS's from
>> any other file type as needed (e.g., if I use \includegraphics{blah}
>> and there is a blah.gif in the directory, the Makefile will convert
>> blah.gif to blah.eps before running LaTeX). IIRC, there are similar
>> automatic conversion facilities built into some of the most
>> sophisticated LaTeX build scripts (e.g., "rubber").
>>
>> Anyway, I'm glad you're both up and running. And I'm glad that now I
>> know about that configuration parameter -- it was something I took for
>> granted before you're issue was posted!
>>
>> Best --
>> Ted
>>
>> --
>> Ted Pavlic<t...@tedpavlic.com>
>>
>
>
>
--
Ted Pavlic <t...@tedpavlic.com>
Please visit my 2009 d'Feet ALS walk page:
http://web.alsa.org/goto/tedp
My family appreciates your support in the fight to defeat ALS.
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