Re: [Swarm Modelling] painting apps

[Russell Standish]

The best software I've come across for doing this sort of stuff is
"pstricks", which is a freely available LaTeX package (from
CTAN). It's excellent for producing technical diagrams, precisely
because it is not a WYSIWIG package. 

On the otherhand, its pretty lousy for artistic freehand style drawing
- one of the standard drawing packages such as xfig will do you for
this. Anything that can output encapsulated postscript is suitable
here.

Graphing data is better done using a plotting package that can produce
eps - I've been very happy with Gnuplot for this purpose.

Bear in mind that eps can be simply and easily imported into LaTeX
(and PSTricks' pspicture environment), so hybrid approaches are easily
followed as well.


The expensive Adobe packages are best for retouching photographic
images - there are freeware alternatives for these to, the best of
which is probably the GIMP.

You should chose the right tool for the job. pstricks is best for the
sort of line diagrams you're trying to do. So often I see poorly
produced scientific illustrations simply because the author chose the
wrong tool for the job (eg using Adobe Phootshop, which is rarely suitable).

                                                Cheers

Scott Christley wrote:
> 
> I know this isn't a modeling question but hopefully those of you 
> writing papers which include graphics have found a solution.
> 
> I'm looking for a basic painting application with tools for drawing 
> graph type structures; circles, boxes, curvy lines(bezier curves), 
> arcs, arrows, labels, that sort of stuff, but not with freehand which 
> will just look sloppy.  The app should also be able to export the 
> images into a format that can be processed by LaTex, encapsulated 
> postscript (EPS) being optimal.  Lastly, I want it to run on Mac OSX 
> but I'm also open to any free software for GNU/Linux.
> 
> I know I can probably buy one of those expensive Adobe packages but 
> that seems overkill for the type of stuff I want to paint.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> thanks
> Scott
> 
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