bleg: drawing graphs in LaTeX

[gusl]

I would like to make graphs like this in LaTeX.



This took me ~10 painful minutes to make in MS Paint.

Any tips?

Comments

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

This looks promising:
http://www.lsv.ens-cachan.fr/~gastin/gastex/gastex.html

[psifenix.livejournal.com]

http://www.tug.org/applications/Xy-pic/

[psifenix.livejournal.com]

There's a pretty good guide in that link, but if you want example code I can send you some of my category theory hw. :P

[tiedyedave]

Back in the day, I used xfig and exported as postscript for latex import, but I hope there are better solutions available nowadays.

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

I use Dia on Linux.

http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

[(Anonymous)]

Use dot, or one of the others from graphviz.org, to make a postscript (or PDF or JPG or ...) figure.

[xuande.livejournal.com]

OpenOffice.org Draw, which is okay for drawing simple graphs, exports to LaTeX-friendly EPS. It doesn't keep any semantic representation of the graph, though, so small semantic changes can require you to redraw the whole thing. For that reason I keep meaning to acquire and learn Dia or Visio or the like at some point.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

xfig, IPE, inkscape

with xfig, use \psfrag when you \includegraphics in order to make the fonts work right (also, for equations). I know IPE, and maybe also inkscape, let you include latex in the figures they generate, so you get a more wysiwyg feel.

For graphs specifically, graphviz (dot, neato, dotty) does a good job sometimes.

Any drawing application on OS X will let you print to pdf (if it lets you print at all), and then you can pdf2ps | ps2epsi to get eps.

[trufflesniffer.livejournal.com]

VUE or Cmaptools?
The new version of VUE allows network properties of graphs to be extracted: sometimes useful.
Not LaTeX, but still quicker than MS Paint!

[inferno0069.livejournal.com]

I'm also a fan of xy-pic and, when that doesn't do the right thing, dia (it can export to LaTeX so you can get the same fonts). I don't think Inkscape existed when I was doing this a lot, but it looks like it would replace dia for me now. Both of them also have Windows binaries, I believe.

[bram.livejournal.com]

I use OmniGraffle.

[ch.livejournal.com]

dot will do this. dot2tex is a handy add-on.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

I learned how to do stuff like this using xy-matrix a while back for the purpose of drawing automata. I'll look up the details, but if you know what you're doing this can be done in ~10 lines of LaTeX.

[wjl.livejournal.com]

OmniGraffle is great, but you need a Mac. For really simple things, you might be able to get away with Paul Taylor's Commutative Diagrams package: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/generic/diagrams/taylor/ . There's also pstricks, but i've never been able to figure it out...

[mcoletti.livejournal.com]

I second graphviz/dot, though there's a certain sacrifice of control for node and edge placement. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.)

Please tell me more about dot2tex.

[wjl.livejournal.com]

also, commutatron 9000!

[ch.livejournal.com]

dot2tex lets you use Latex for the labels, so equations and symbols work in a familiar way with consistent typesetting.

plus it has a few other tricks that make the output look more like it came directly from LaTeX.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if you like pain, there are standard packages for LaTeX for drawing diagrams (and some non-standard ones that are moderately less sadistic).

[roseandsigil.livejournal.com]

I'll put in a third for xypic.