PSTricks 97 ------------------------------------------------- PSTricks is the work of Timothy van Zandt PST97 is edited by Denis Girou Sebastian Rahtz ------------------------------------------------- This package is a re-release of PSTricks, incorporating all of the beta releases and bug fixes made up to March 1997. It is *not* intended as a full new release of PSTricks, but as a consolidation and cleaning exercise. Because Timothy van Zandt does not currently have enough time to work on PSTricks, he gave permission for Denis Girou and Sebastian Rahtz to produce this interim solution; Denis Girou agreed at the same time to maintain a supporting set of Web pages on http://www.tug.org/applications/PSTricks CHANGES ******* No new features have been added in PST97, except the release of the small pst-fill package for filling (tiling) arbitrary regions, but we have merged in all the bug fixes and beta addons which Timothy produced. The file pstricks.bug is currently empty, but we still load it at the end of the pstricks.tex file, so that fixes can be released in new versions of this file --- this will work only for pstricks.tex and not for other PSTricks components. We have renamed some of the files that make up PSTricks, for consistency; the components are now: New Name Old Name (kept as a symbolic link in the distribution) -------- --------- pstricks.tex pst-3d.tex pst-char.tex charpath.tex pst-code.tex pst-coil.tex pst-eps.tex pst-fill.tex pst-grad.tex gradient.tex pst-node.tex pst-plot.tex pst-text.tex textpath.tex pst-tree.tex pstree.tex pstricks.con colortab.tex multido.tex Each of these generic/plain TeX files has a corresponding LaTeX package, which is simply a `wrapper' which inputs the main file of macros. In addition, there is a LaTeX package `pst-all' which loads all of the PSTricks components, plus `pstcol', in one go (`pstcol' require also a color.cfg file defined and after that to not load the `color' package by itself). The only reason for _not_ using this is that it uses extra memory for facilities you might not need. CONFIGURATION FILES ******************* The default `pstricks.con' sets up PSTricks for use with Rokicki's dvips. Three alternative files are provided: dvipsone.con for Y&Y's dvipsone driver textures15.con for Blue Sky's Textures 1.5 textures17.con for Blue Sky's Textures 1.7 If you use these drivers, back up pstricks.con, and rename the appropriate .con file to pstricks.con. STANDARD LATEX COLOR AND GRAPHICS ********************************* In 1994, standard color and graphics packages were produced for LaTeX (LaTeX2e) - an interface is also available (plgraph) which makes them work with plain TeX too. Since the `color' package is not 100% compatible with PSTricks, David Carlisle added an extra package `pstcol', which loads `color' and `pstricks' in the right order, and overrides some small parts of PSTricks to allow it to use the `color' package system for specifying color. We strongly recommend that you use the color package (both for LaTeX and plain) and not the old palette.sty with the PSTricks primitives. There is an unfortunate compatibility problem between the \scalebox command of PST and the one of the graphics/graphicx package (\scalebox{}[]{} syntax in 2e). They have the same syntax, but do different things. We recommend that you load `graphicx' _after_ PSTricks, unless you really need the latter's usage. If you want to color table cells and lines in LaTeX tables, the `colortab' package distributed with PSTricks is, in our opinion, now superceded by David Carlisle `colortbl' package, and we recommend that you use the latter. `colortbl', unlike `colortab', works in all cases with the current version of the longtable package. Nevertheless note also that `colortab' works with plain TeX, which `colortbl' does not. PSTricks 97 and Seminar: *********************** There is an incompatibility between PSTricks 97 and Seminar, at least using the dvips driver. This is due to non synchronisation with internal LaTeX evolutions in Seminar. To use both PSTricks 97 and Seminar you must use a recent version of the standard `graphics' package and a version of seminar from CTAN dated 1997/04/15 or later. If you want to edit your own copy of seminar.cls, the only change needed is as follows: \providecommand\@begindvi{} % ADD THIS LINE \def\@makeslide{% \setbox\@slidebox\vbox{% \@begindvi % ADD THIS LINE \unvbox\@cclv \ifvoid\slide@footins\else \vskip\skip\slide@footins \footnoterule \unvbox\slide@footins \fi \vskip\z@}} SUMMARY OF PITFALLS ******************* - Don't forget to remove (or archive) all the old files of 0.93a distribution (.sty, .tex, .con, .pro, etc.) and to install all the new ones properly (don't forget the dvips/*.pro ones). - Don't try to load the `color' package if you use `pst-all' (it is already loaded in the correct order). - If needed, preferably load the `graphics' / `graphicx' package after PSTricks, and in this case use the `graphics' syntax of \scalebox (not the one described in the PSTricks documentation). - If you load `graphics' / `graphicx' before PSTricks, you must use the PSTricks syntax of \scalebox in all cases (not the one described in the `grfguide' document). DOCUMENTATION ************* Users should understand immediately that neither the documentation nor the documented source has been edited for this release! The changes are all to the stripped macro files and PostScript headers. Since no new features are added, the documentation is still correct, apart from known typos etc, but users will have to combine the main documentation with that for the old beta release. Denis Girou has prepared a list of known errors in the documentation, included in this distribution as pst-doc.err. A large chapter of _The LaTeX Graphics Companion_, Goossens, Rahtz and Mittelbach, Addison Wesley 1997, is dedicated to PSTricks, and this currently forms the only systematic description of the integration of the basic PSTricks and the beta additions of 1993. The source of all examples from that book is also on CTAN in info/lgc.