Using PSTricks with Textures

The current maintainers of PSTricks have an information page at http://www.tug.org/applications/PSTricks/.

PSTricks is a generic TeX package that may be called from either Plain TeX and its close relatives, or from Latex. As distributed, the package is set up to be used out of the box by users of standard Tex--dvips distributions, with installation consisting of placing the required .tex and .sty files in the appropriate TeX Input directories, and the .pro header files in locations searched by dvips. The default form of the crucial configuration file pstricks.con assumes that the \special inclusions follow the dvips model.

Users of Textures (a typesetting system for the Macintosh sold by Blue Sky Research) can use almost all features of the PSTricks package provided they have version 1.7 or higher, and they install the package as follows:

• Move all files from the distribution folders dvips/, generic/ and latex/ into TeX Inputs, or a subfolder of TeX Inputs.
• Rename the file pstricks.con to pstricks.dvips, and then rename textures.con to pstricks.con.
• Make the following change in the file pstricks.pro:

  %/STV { SDict begin normalscale end STP  } def
  %
  %must be changed for Textures to read
  %
  /STV { Mag 72.27 72 div mul dup neg scale STP  } def
  

Usage differences

0. edit the tex source file containing calls to pstricks macros;
1. tex the file, correcting errors until a dvi file is generated;
2. run dvips over the dvi file to generate a ps file;
3. view the result with ghostview or some other Postscript rendering engine;
4. repeat the above until all is as it should be, then print the ps file.

With Textures, there is no dvips, and the production cycle is as follows, assuming you are using a Postscript printer with Laserwriter 8 or Adobe PSPrinter.

0. edit the tex source file containing calls to pstricks macros;
1. typeset the file, correcting errors as necessary;
2. select the Textures Typeset window, and call File/Print. If paper and printing costs are not a concern, print to the printer, else in the print dialog that follows, select "print to file", with option "include all but standard 13 postscript fonts" to generate a ps file;
3. view the resulting ps file with ghostview or some other Postscript rendering engine;
4. repeat until all is as it should be, then print the Typeset window to a Postscript printer.

Under MacOS8.1, I had better luck with Adobe PSPrinter 8.5.1 than with Laserwriter 8.5, but Laserwriter 8.6 seems to function better than the Adobe driver under MacOS 8.5. In fact, under MacOS 8.5.1 and the Adobe driver, pst-node macros lead to Postscript errors. (Be aware that in installing AdobePSPrinter 8.5.1 overwrites the PrintingLib extension with a version incompatible with that installed with Laserwriter 8.6.) The new Adobe PSPrinter 8.6 has a bonus for Acrobat 4.0 users. With the Adobe PS printer driver and Create Adobe PDF (both downloadable from http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/LIBRARY/5aa6.htm) creating a pdf file from Textures is a simple matter of printing with the "Create Adobe PDF" printer driver. In addition, that driver can be set up to call Acrobat or Acrobat Reader as soon as the pdf file is created. This gives a very handy means of viewing the pstricks output.

Conflicts with Textures

• The pst-text.tex macros don't correctly generate text along a path using the above methods.
• The color macros don't work under Latex, though they are OK with Plain TeX. There seems to be a problem with the textures.def file distributed as Latex R9P0. A fix is supposedly in the works. [Note added 7/5/00: I just received from technical support at Blue Sky Research an updated version of textures.def that seems to fix the Latex problems with color rendition. It's preamble states that it is intended for Textures 2.0 and higher. They also supplied a new pstricks.con which improves pstricks stability and incorporates the patch to pstricks.pro mentioned above. The fixes for both these files are due to Ross Moore. They also supplied an update for htexture.def which fixes a number of problems using the hyperref package with Textures.]
• You may get strange error messages if your pstricks files are not converted to use Macintosh line endings. You are likely to see this problem if you transferred files from CTAN using a web browser.
• In Textures 1.8.1, the Postscript file generated by Textures \special{postscript ...} truncates Postscript inclusions of more than about 410 characters with the characters "\ETC." effectively demolishing use of PSTricks in this version of Textures. According to Floyd at BlueSky, this bug in Textures' handling of \special{postscript ...} slipped into version 1.8.1 and is fixed in versions 1.8.2 and higher. (This is also partly due to an ungraceful piece of the TeX code, which in the absence of sufficient string space, truncates the strings without warning and inserts \ETC.)
• The recent versions of pstricks (starting with pstricks97) are no longer compatible with the old Latex seminar macros. If you wish to use the seminar macros to generate slides in conjunction with pstricks graphics, be sure to download seminar version 1.4 from a CTAN site.