4 ms·

TikZ is a microcosm of LaTeX itself: powerful, expressive, able to automate repetitive tasks, beautiful output -- but sometimes, it takes forever to do somethin

by blt 8y ago

TikZ is a microcosm of LaTeX itself: powerful, expressive, able to automate repetitive tasks, beautiful output -- but sometimes, it takes forever to do something that would take a few mouse clicks in a GUI tool.

kashyapc 8y ago
I completely hear you. Despite my extremely limited skills with TikZ, My brain "somehow" stubbornly insists to keep chugging along with TikZ, spending unreasonable amounts of time. But I love the end result; the way text and diagrams meld so cleanly. Nothing comes close. On the unreasonable amount of time spent: Last December, "merely" to get the arrows right neatly arranged, I spent more than 2 hours :-(. See the transition from: wonky-arrows1.png --> wonky-arrows2.png --> much-better-arrows3.png --> even-better-arrows4.png (the "final") here[1]. In two months I have another deadline to produce some technical material with TikZ diagrams (that's my choice, though). I'm determined to become more efficient at it. [1] https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/temp/tikz/ https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/temp/tikz/
- blt 8y ago
  Yeah, I keep using it in the hope that I will slowly memorize it, and one day I will be able to use it effectively without constantly reading docs. This approach worked for LaTeX itself, and vim...
- rerx 8y ago
  ... but the text in the boxes still has a weird baseline. Sorry to spoil the fun, but if you just invested a few hours to learn how to work with Inkscape, you would become much more efficient sooner. At some point during my PhD I accepted that LaTeX is not the right tool for graphical work. Stubbornly I was still texing my slides with Beamer, but half their content was figures prepared in Inkscape.
  - ygra 8y ago
    For this kind of thing, something like yEd [1], specialized for graphs should work nicely as well. [1] https://www.yworks.com/yed-live/#file=https://gist.githubusercontent.com/ygra/8ee707e7f41d4fa898f34284d982f809/raw/Untitled%20Document https://www.yworks.com/yed-live/#file=https://gist.githubuse...
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    ...weird baseline. Is that caused by the tails of the letters "y" and "p"? The one box that doesn't have a tailed letter, "base", looks fine. There should be a way to tell the system to use the normal font baseline instead of something it can figure out geometrically.
    - rerx 8y ago
      I'm sure there is a way to tell TikZ about that. In Inkscape you would just shift-click all words and click the baseline icon in the align-and-distribute panel. The thing with preparing figures is that you want to iterate rapidly on small changes. That works so much better without a mental context switch between code and result and without having to wait for the compilation to finish (significant if the figure is embedded in a large document). If you had to prepare hundreds of very similar diagrams that all need to look great, then I could understand the point of using TikZ for such a job. Typesetting document text is different because LaTeX does a great job by default.
  - blt 8y ago
    Yeah, I use beamer for (text + math + plot)-only content but as soon as any video or animation is needed, gotta switch to ppt or keynote
  - kashyapc 8y ago
    Hmm, I haven't even noticed the "weird baseline" (what is so weird about it?). On Inkscape, another colleague also suggested it. I'll give it a try next week. My main use of LaTex (with Beamer) + TikZ is for not too complicated diagrams for presentations.
lurquer 8y ago
It's a pretty sweet system. I use it to design puzzle books. (Crisscross, Cryptograms, nonograms, fill-a-pix, etc.) There is no greater time-sink than writing a true program in Latex... I generally write a C++ program to write the latex/Tikz code using the most basic primitives. I would prefer to do layout using a pure C++ 2d library such as SFML and then export a 'screen' as a PDF. But, to date we haven't been able to match the sheer 'beauty' of Latex/Tkz output. Shameless plug for our puzzle books: search Amazon for Klooto Games.

by blt 8y ago

kashyapc 8y ago

I completely hear you. Despite my extremely limited skills with TikZ, My brain "somehow" stubbornly insists to keep chugging along with TikZ, spending unreasonable amounts of time. But I love the end result; the way text and diagrams meld so cleanly. Nothing comes close. On the unreasonable amount of time spent: Last December, "merely" to get the arrows right neatly arranged, I spent more than 2 hours :-(. See the transition from: wonky-arrows1.png --> wonky-arrows2.png --> much-better-arrows3.png --> even-better-arrows4.png (the "final") here[1]. In two months I have another deadline to produce some technical material with TikZ diagrams (that's my choice, though). I'm determined to become more efficient at it. [1] https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/temp/tikz/ https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/temp/tikz/

blt 8y ago
Yeah, I keep using it in the hope that I will slowly memorize it, and one day I will be able to use it effectively without constantly reading docs. This approach worked for LaTeX itself, and vim...
rerx 8y ago
... but the text in the boxes still has a weird baseline. Sorry to spoil the fun, but if you just invested a few hours to learn how to work with Inkscape, you would become much more efficient sooner. At some point during my PhD I accepted that LaTeX is not the right tool for graphical work. Stubbornly I was still texing my slides with Beamer, but half their content was figures prepared in Inkscape.
- ygra 8y ago
  For this kind of thing, something like yEd [1], specialized for graphs should work nicely as well. [1] https://www.yworks.com/yed-live/#file=https://gist.githubusercontent.com/ygra/8ee707e7f41d4fa898f34284d982f809/raw/Untitled%20Document https://www.yworks.com/yed-live/#file=https://gist.githubuse...
- jessaustin 8y ago
  ...weird baseline. Is that caused by the tails of the letters "y" and "p"? The one box that doesn't have a tailed letter, "base", looks fine. There should be a way to tell the system to use the normal font baseline instead of something it can figure out geometrically.
  - rerx 8y ago
    I'm sure there is a way to tell TikZ about that. In Inkscape you would just shift-click all words and click the baseline icon in the align-and-distribute panel. The thing with preparing figures is that you want to iterate rapidly on small changes. That works so much better without a mental context switch between code and result and without having to wait for the compilation to finish (significant if the figure is embedded in a large document). If you had to prepare hundreds of very similar diagrams that all need to look great, then I could understand the point of using TikZ for such a job. Typesetting document text is different because LaTeX does a great job by default.
- blt 8y ago
  Yeah, I use beamer for (text + math + plot)-only content but as soon as any video or animation is needed, gotta switch to ppt or keynote
- kashyapc 8y ago
  Hmm, I haven't even noticed the "weird baseline" (what is so weird about it?). On Inkscape, another colleague also suggested it. I'll give it a try next week. My main use of LaTex (with Beamer) + TikZ is for not too complicated diagrams for presentations.

lurquer 8y ago

It's a pretty sweet system. I use it to design puzzle books. (Crisscross, Cryptograms, nonograms, fill-a-pix, etc.) There is no greater time-sink than writing a true program in Latex... I generally write a C++ program to write the latex/Tikz code using the most basic primitives. I would prefer to do layout using a pure C++ 2d library such as SFML and then export a 'screen' as a PDF. But, to date we haven't been able to match the sheer 'beauty' of Latex/Tkz output. Shameless plug for our puzzle books: search Amazon for Klooto Games.