Re: Some issues

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On 21 Dec 2003, Jon A. Solworth wrote:
> Chris,
>       Sorry for the confusion.  I had sent a Dia file to
> Lars to show the arrow problem with xfig arrows.
>
>       The figures came from a computer security course
> in which I covered some newtwork cryptographic protocols.  Since I could

"They turned it into a newt!"
"A newt?"
"It... it got better."

> not get pdflatex to process any dia output
> with latex mathmode and color, I just exported to eps,
> and what showed up on the screen had underscores in it but
> did not need escapes since the text was never processed
> by (pdf)latex.  Since the figure had been around for a while,
> I answered your question without thinking about the fig.
> So it was entirely my fault.  I am attaching current version which is
> expected to run through metapost (ie latex).
>
>       Because of the differences in the viewable diagram using different
> exports, I think the only long term solution would be a two step
> process--process in latex the labels using metapost from within dia--and
> then produce the output with the processed labels.
>
>       But the above substantial programming task is not the most
> important issue to me, I (and especially my students) will be *very*
> happy to produce readable labels on my diagrams!

If any of your students feel like looking into it, a patch would be very
welcome.  Easiest would be to make a new object based on, e.g., the UML
Note or Standard Text object.  Start simple, get the LaTeX roundtrip up,
then we can fancy it up later.  The final solution would be to make it
something that can be done for any text.  I'm sorry that I don't have the
time to look into it myself, I must spend what time I have on speeding up
text rendering.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HÃrdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?