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Wednesday, October 05, 2005

DIAgrams, XFIGures, and FINK

I'm in need of a system independent (meaning just Mac and Linux) method for drawing diagrams. I like Dia because it's easy to use. However, that's probably just because I've been using it for about 4 years now. Every diagram I've every drawn in my documents since I started using LaTeX in 2002 has been done using Dia. In fact, even the diagrams I put into OpenOffice Impress slides were done using Dia. Since I could modify one Dia file and export it for both the presentation and the document. (Will try LaTeX slides soon, OpenOffice takes ages to load, and you can't "make" them off central EPS image repositories automatically)

Now, I also have an iBook G4 running OS X Panther. With CVS, I am able to work on one CVS Root located on my staff account. This is great for keeping all your work synchronized at one location (moreover staff directories are backed up). Unfortunately Dia doesn't run on my iBook, that is, while there is one central copy of the project, the source file for diagrams (using Dia) is only editable on the Linux machines. What does work on the Linux machines and the iBook is XFig. This, to me at least, has a relatively cumbersome interface. That said, XFig does have its fans. So I tried using it for awhile but gave up.

I know some of you might be thinking, "but you can get Dia off Fink on the Mac." Last time I tried "fink install dia", it asked if I wanted to install the 108 dependencies, to which I replied "yes", waited half a day, and then it ran into an error. I don't even want to imagine what half baked packages were in "/sw".

Yet, that's the beauty of Fink: everything is in "/sw". Today, I renamed "/sw" to "/sw.oldfink" (just incase I need it back) and installed Fink again (a newer version 0.7.2) and will try Dia again soon. This time, I'll go for the "binary" option if any (Dia on Fink is still "unstable").

2 Comments:

  • I'm using the seminar package for latex but its really vanilla. What exactly is the trouble with openoffice? haven't tried it yet.

    By Blogger Ray, at Sat Oct 08, 07:46:00 PM 2005  

  • (1) Too clunky; iBook G4 is too slow! Ha ha. (2) Can't use LaTeX style formulas; super-scripts and sub-scripts are troublesome. (3) If I fix an EPS image for, say a paper, you have to manually change the image in the OO Impress file.

    By Blogger peterpiper, at Sat Oct 08, 11:17:00 PM 2005  

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