On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 17:03, Michail Vidiassov wrote:
Dear Mojca,
On Sun, 19 Apr 2009, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
If Asymptote is not able to handle PDF files, maybe Asymptote itself would need extensions. (When I last tried to use Asymptote I gave up since I was not able to figure out how to install it and started using other tools.)
This (installation problems) is part of the question why typesetting in Asymptote with ConTeXt is desirable - no need to maintain separate LaTeX installation, avoiding mixup with older version of ConTeXt that comes with it, etc.
I was mostly talking about dependency problems on libraries when compiling asymptote (I have no idea what libraries it depends on, but there are definitely many of them). If I want to install asymptote with packaging system (like macports), then I *have to* install some ancient version of TeX Live (which is great since I now need to have three copies of TeX Live on hard-drive and without ever using it). If I want to compile asymptote myself, I would drive me crazy before I would figure out all the library dependencies. It would be really nice if someone would be ready to spend time to include asymptote in TeX Live. That would make installation thousand times easier.
And at this moment Asymptote is (almost) the only tool that makes 3D PDF directly (without $$$$ Windows-only converter like Acrobat), is Metapost-like and not some CAD monster or VRML fossil.
No doubt about it. I'm trying to survive by using some random mixture of tools like gnuplot, povray, matlab, mathematica, raw EPS, ... Mathematica has become really impressive recently and is able to export 3D figures, but it's not free. I wanted to use asymptote, but I had to finish something until the deadline and didn't have the necessary time left to install and learn it.
If you would like asymptote to handle ConTeXt labels you should start with mkii. But honestly: I don't really see when LaTeX for typesetting labels would not suffice. ConTeXt is extremely good at page formatting, but when it comes to typeset "$A$" for point labels, I would not mind using LaTeX (If it's only about OpenType you cannot do anything unless Asymptote gets extended, but even then you could use XeTeX.)
Apart from maintenance problems with the zoo of tools, Asymptote aspires for high quality of labels (and has invested considerable effort to preserve it in 3D mode), that implies that labels are to be in the same font as the main text and/or follow some predetermined style.
True, but usually setting the right font is doable.
As a side note - PS is a programming language very well suited for just this kind of problems. ;)
I agree, but PS is easy to write, while parsing someone else's code automatically is challenging, not to say impossible. -------------------- In any case, I would recommend you to contact asymptote developers. There's a bunch of LaTeX commands that are being harcoded in asymptote source, and those would have to be rewritten and made configurable. Next, you'll probably need some switch to trigger executing ConTeXt instead of LaTeX. There is some split betwen plain TeX and LaTeX, but you'll need a bit more work to include ConTeXt support as well. I don't know how exactly Asymptote works. You said that it uses dvi, but I have seen the word "xelatex" in the source, so there's no reason why you couldn't use LuaTeX. XeLaTeX doesn't generate dvi files either. Ask the developers if it is possible to use PDF. It will be much much easier if you could use PDF since you could have all the three engines supported in a single move. If you'll start with dvi, you'll have to reconfigure everything later to make it work with XeTeX and/or LuaTeX. Mojca