Daily Archives: February 23, 2001

February 23 2001

Struggling with Postscript – not any more!

First, I’d like to thank those of you who posted in my discussion group – or on their own sites – and tried to help solving my Postscript problem. (I don’t know if anyone sent tips via email because the mailserver has been down for a couple of hours and still is.) Thank you so much, Jörg, Scott, Garret, Eric and Max, for your tips, and André, for your help and patience!

Now, about my Mathematica graphics: I gave them up. Well, not really, but I decided not to use the graphics I created with Mathematica. When I created them a little while ago, it seemed a good idea to use Mathematica because I already knew how it works, but of course I didn’t know that it doesn’t export Postscript files properly.

LaTeX comes with its own graphic tool called MetaPost. Initially, I had decided against using it because it seemed too much effort to learn a programming language for less than a dozen graphics, but now I tried it out anyway. And it works! It’s a bit more complicated than Mathematica, but it does what I want.

The good thing about my pictures is that they consist only of straight lines and circles or parts of circles. I just learned how to draw lines with MetaPost, and have thus re-created three of the nine pictures I had done so far. It’s now midnight, and I’m leaving the circles and the other graphics for tomorrow.

While I think this is not the perfect solution because I have to recreate pictures I already have on my hard drive, it still seems to be much easier than trying to get those Postscripts to work properly.

Again, thank you very much for your tips! It’s great to know you are out there and willing to help me! I’ll keep you posted about my problems…

Community

Craig thinks of himself (and other webloggers) as a link jockey. I like the idea. LJ CJ rules!

LaTeX

Gary L. Gray’s Macintosh TeX/LaTeX Web Site is a very useful resource for – you guessed it – TeX/LaTeX users on the Macintosh!

Please Help!

Update: It seems the problem is that Mathematica doesn’t generate a proper .ps file of the graphics. So what do I do now?

Okay, I have this problem: I’ve written my thesis with LaTeX and created my graphics with Mathematica. To be specific, I use OzTeX 3.1.1 and Mathematica 3.0.0.1 for Apple Macintosh, MacOS 9.0.4. Now, it should be easy to export the Mathematica graphs as either .ps or .eps, include them in the LaTeX document and be able to print them. However, it doesn’t work! I can print the graphs from Mathematica directly just fine, and I can print my LaTeX document as well. But when I try to include the graphics in the LaTeX document, it doesn’t work any more. I tried including the graphic like this:

\begin{figure}[h]

    \centering

    \epsfig{file=modulallgemein.eps,width=textwidth}

    \caption{Modulfigur}

    \label{fig:modulfigur}

\end{figure}

With this, the graphic appears in OzTex (see screenshot), but when I print the page, I just get white space instead of the graphic.

I also tried to include the graphic using \includegraphics{modulallg.ps}, but this doesn’t work either.

To export the graph from Mathematica, I tried both to print the graphic into a file (.ps), and to select the graph and choose ‘Save selection as .eps’.

The strange thing is that I can print the LaTeX file and the graphic seperately, but not together. I also tried converting the .dvi into .ps and viewing it with MacGhostView, but same problem: I can view text and graphic seperately, but I can’t see the graphic if I include it in LaTeX.

Has anyone encountered this problem, or has anyone an idea why it doesn’t work? Please let me know via the discussion group [NOT via Email, the mailserver is down at the moment, sorry.)] Thanks in advance for any tips or help.

Retroshock

Nick Selby: Retroshock: When the Familiar Is Unfamiliar.

“’One of the first things that people returning to the States see is the monumental waste — throwing food away, excess packaging and these things are very disturbing because you tend not to notice them before you go away.’ […]

For many, retro-shock begins on the flight home […] ‘And then the captain told us that the temperature in New York was 45 degrees. For the last three years, I’ve been living like the rest of the world, in Celsius. For a second I thought it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit in January in New York.'”

Highways to Hell – Driving in Germany

Nick Selby: Giving New Meaning To ‘Floor It’.

“No matter how fast you go, someone’s going to be faster; no matter how clear your rear-view mirror is, check again. . . . There’ll be someone there.”

I know why I like traveling by train.

Community

Happy first Weblog birthday, Tsja!

404

The 404 Research Lab has “Links to the best 404 Not Found errors on the web, researched and categorized for your surfing enjoyment.” They also have a section on the history of 404.

Link via Jan-Willem’s first weblog entry.