[vox-tech] Rant: LaTeX graphics programs

[Peter Jay Salzman]

I need to vent frustration.

Xfig has got to be the single most un-user friendly piece of software I've
ever seen.  I experience physical pain everytime I use it.

It's NOT a hyperbole to say that I can do most diagrams faster by coding the
picture environment by hand than drawing the equivalent diagram with xfig.
Maybe if xfig developers stole the Gimp interface things would be better.
As it stands, it looks like a musty UNIX(TM) application from the 80's.
Looks like Xaw or something.  Congress should do something useful for a
change, like outlawying the X toolkit.

My hat is off to anyone on this list who is actually handy with this
monstrosity.

Dia's interface is OK, but doesn't give me a lot of control over the
objects.  Its font stuff almost never works right when you view the final
LaTeX dvi/postscript.  Dia also seems to have wierd scaling issues when
exporting to tex format.  Also, Dia is WYSIAWYG (what you see is almost what
you get).

What I really want is a program like Macromedia Flash that can export to a
LaTeX picture environment format.

I'd settle for Gimp having vector operations.  Although Gimp can export to
vector formats, it's firmly a bitmap-centric application and unsuited for
this kind of thing.

There's a rumor that Macromedia might be porting its suite to Linux.  I will
be VERY HAPPY if that comes true.  I'd gladly shell out a few hundred bucks
for that program on Linux.

Pete

-- 
Every theory is killed sooner or later, but if the theory has good in it,
that good is embodied and continued in the next theory. -- Albert Einstein

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