Re: [O] Best diagram, image software?

From:

Peter Davis

Subject:

Date:

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 09:54:20 -0400

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016, at 09:11 AM, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:

I know lots of you use Emacs and org mode to prepare scholarly books and papers, either doing the HTML or, more probably, the Latex export. Question: Let's say I want to produce a math text with Emacs/org-mode/Latex. What is the best way to make diagrams and images? I've seen things like Inkscape and LibreOffice Draw. But then there is Gnuplot and Tikz. Yes, what Tikz does seems optimal, but the learning curve is a year's sabbatical. Just wondering what you people are using to do your images.

I think it really depends on what kinds of diagrams and images you're trying to use. I've been using embedded dot (GraphViz) diagrams with org for a number of years, and I find it fantastically helpful for things like graphs (nodes connected by arrows, optionally all labelled), data structure diagrams, etc. ... the basic boxes and lines kind of drawing.

I also just discovered ditaa, which seems also good for boxes and lines, but with more freedom (and more work to edit the input).

I've also used PlantUML for modelling diagrams.

I know others are using embedded R code to get data visualization graphics automatically.

This page gives some examples: http://ehneilsen.net/notebook/orgExamples/org-examples.html. There should be an authoritative page on graphics formats, but I'm not aware of one.

Most of these use separate packages to create the graphics, but there are hooks in org to call the external programs and include the results in the document.

-pd

Peter Davis