Re: tlug: MagicPoint and math

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

I'd just do a screen capture of xdvi (or gv if you've also got some
embedded  postscript figures) with xv or the gimp to generate the gif.

I'd probably do it interactively (creating presentations is interactive
work for me) but if you really wanted a batchmode latex -> (transparent)
gif tool, you could probably hack something together with pbmplus and
whatever that funky XFree86 experimental server is that acts as a
"virtual" display (no physical hardware, just memory).  Can't remember
what it's called....

I find it easier to draw boxes around what I want in my figure than I do
trying to determine coordinates for pbmplus tools.  :-)

Cheers,
-- 
Rex

On Fri, May 29, 1998 at 03:19:38PM +0900, David Dibben wrote:
> 
> On 29-May-98 Manuel Chakravarty wrote:
> >> David Dibben <dibben@example.com> wrote,
> >> > I didn't manage to get the ps2gif script that comes with latex2html to
> >> > produce a gif file that magic point would work with (but I didn't try very
> >> > hard.) Doing it manually, tex -> dvi -> ps -> ppm -> gif worked fine.
> >> > Using
> >> > the pnmcrop tool on the ppm file to leave only the equation. The equation
> >> > can then be included as a normal image into the magic point presentation.
> >> > I am sure that it will be relatively simple to write a script that
> >> > can do all of this automatically. 
> >>
> >> Correction: the ps2gif script does work, something seemed to be broken on my
> >> system. Also, since the images produced by latex2html are
> >> transparent gifs the the background shows through.
> > 
> > I would still not be really happy with this.  Including some
> > equations into a .mgp file and writing a script to pipe them
> > thtough TeX and convert them into a .gif, is a start, but on
> > the other hand, I usually have a big bunch of preamble
> > definitions in my LaTeX files, so formatting individual
> > equations is not enough.
> 
> latex2html produces a separate image file for each equation even if they come
> from the same latex file. You could run your single file through latex2html to
> produce all the images rather than doing them individually. This is still a
> bit messy though.
>  
> > The ideal thing might be something like a special LaTeX
> > style and a tool, which allows you to write your
> > presentation completely in LaTeX and then generate an .mpg
> > file (and a bunch of .gifs) from it.  This would also allow
> > you to make use of other LaTeX packages.  For example, I do
> > all my figures with PSTricks these days.  Overall, you would 
> > get something like `latex2mgp', but with the restriction
> > that you have to you use this special style file.
> > 
> > `latex2html' is written in Perl, isn't it?  
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > One problem is that markup in .mpg is quite simple (as far as I saw), so it 
> > might be a bit difficult to convert some of the LaTeX stuff
> > into .mpg...
> 
> 
> I agree that a `latex2mgp' would be very nice, and I also agree that it would be
> far from trivial to do. One possiblity would be to take a similar approach to
> latex2html and convert the latex to a gif (or jpeg) file whenever there is no
> direct way to convert from latex to mgp. In this way you could still do your
> figures in PSTricks and get the script to convert them to a gif. 
> 
> 
> 
> David
> 
> ---
> Dr. David Dibben
> National Food Research Institute
> 2-1-2 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8642. Japan
> Tel:  0298 38 8029           
> Fax: 0298 38 8122
> E-Mail: dibben@example.com
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Next TLUG Meeting: 13 June Sat, Tokyo Station Yaesu gate 12:30
Featuring Stone and Turnbull on .rpm and .deb packages
Next Nomikai: (?) July, 19:30 Tengu TokyoEkiMae 03-3275-3691
--------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsor: PHT, makers of TurboLinux http://www.pht.co.jp