I'm a LaTeX user who produces very boring technical diagrams for incorporation as .EPS into LaTeX documents. Karnaugh maps, circuit schematics, timing diagrams, that sort of thing.

What is my best tool to use?

A decade or two ago, I used SmartDraw, which seemed to produce good .EPS. (But the recent versions no longer do.)

What are the best tools now?

Money is no object. I would not mind using something like Visio, and then somehow converting to .EPS (but how?). I don't mind spending money to get convenience (so the tools recommended don't have to be free).

What has anyone had good experiences with?

Thanks.

On 8/12/2023 10:23 AM, das...@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm a LaTeX user who produces very boring technical diagrams for incorporation as .EPS into LaTeX documents. Karnaugh maps, circuit schematics, timing diagrams, that sort of thing.
>
> What is my best tool to use?
>
> A decade or two ago, I used SmartDraw, which seemed to produce good .EPS. (But the recent versions no longer do.)
>
> What are the best tools now?
>
> Money is no object. I would not mind using something like Visio, and then somehow converting to .EPS (but how?). I don't mind spending money to get convenience (so the tools recommended don't have to be free).
>
> What has anyone had good experiences with?
>
> Thanks.

Tikz will be the best ofcourse, but this is hard to learn and not easy.

So I myself use IPE https://ipe.otfried.org/ where you can write
latex directly, and it exports to pdf which you include in the latex. I think IPE
has packages for circuits and so on. You can google that.

VISIO is good, but the problem is that it has no support for Latex.
Microsoft who makes Visio, does not think Latex is important so they
did not add latex support to it.

--Nasser

On 12/08/2023 16:23, das...@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm a LaTeX user who produces very boring technical diagrams for
> incorporation as .EPS into LaTeX documents.

EPS is obsolescent. It's still used, but the current preferred format is
a vector PDF, or perhaps SVG.

LaTeX handles PDFs with the graphicx package, and SVG with the svg
package. You should use xelatex or lualatex as your TeX engine.

> Karnaugh maps, circuit schematics, timing diagrams, that sort of
> thing. What is my best tool to use?

Use whatever is the best for the application provided that it can export
the drawing as a vector PDF or an SVG. An application that can only
export EPS is likely to be behind the times in other areas as well.

As far as I know, LaTeX is not an issue here.

> Money is no object. I would not mind using something like Visio, and
> then somehow converting to .EPS (but how?).

No. Visio can export as PDF or SVG. EPS only works with the earliest
form of LaTeX and AFAIK is only used now by a few publishers whose
platemater's RIP still requires the format.

Peter

In article <28ac63d0-6b24-42a5-aeb4-f80e042ec553n@googlegroups.com>,
dashley@gmail.com says...
>
> I'm a LaTeX user who produces very boring technical diagrams for
incorporation as .EPS into LaTeX documents.
> What is my best tool to use? Money is no object.

EPS and PS are no longer in use, PDF seems the gold standard. My work
flow is to print a diagram into a pdf-file using the systems standard
driver, then use the "Bright snippet sire (Briss)" to crop.

Thus I can use whatever program I like for drawings (Biovia for chemical
structures, DeepView for macromolecules, DipTrace for electronic
schematics, SigmaPlot for lab results, ...) and pdfXeLaTeX to bring
everything together.

Of course, if money is no object, you can use AutoCAD ;-)

Am 25.08.2023 um 14:09 schrieb Dr Engelbert Buxbaum:
> In article <28ac63d0-6b24-42a5-aeb4-f80e042ec553n@googlegroups.com>,
> dashley@gmail.com says...
>>
>> I'm a LaTeX user who produces very boring technical diagrams for
> incorporation as .EPS into LaTeX documents.
>> What is my best tool to use? Money is no object.
>
> EPS and PS are no longer in use, PDF seems the gold standard. My work
> flow is to print a diagram into a pdf-file using the systems standard
> driver, then use the "Bright snippet sire (Briss)" to crop.

For automated cropping there is also the perl script "pdfcrop".

Holger