On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Jules Bean wrote: > On Sat, Feb 02, 2002 at 07:30:16AM -0800, Kayvan A. Sylvan wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 02, 2002 at 09:58:16AM +0000, Jules Bean wrote: > > > As an example of the kind of thing I'm thinking of, categorists and > > > topologists often want to draw commutative diagrams. I'm neither, but > > > I have attended a category theory course, and I wrote up my notes in > > > LyX. I had to do with huge amounts of ERT (there may even have been > > > some posts from me here about it at that time). > > > > > > > The best thing for that is to grab "dia". It's a tool for editing > > diagrams. I use it to create object-oriented designs using UML, > > but it also has lots of other diagram sets including circuit diagrams, > > ER diagrams, flowcharts, etc. > > Without wishing to be rude... I don't that is the best thing. > > Unless dia is *far* better than it was when I last looked, it's still > essentially a graphical tool. WYSIWYG, in other words. I search for > a more formal, logical, WYSIWYM approach. I just specify the data of > the commutative diagram in LaTeX, the diagram packages handle the > layout.
You do realize that this is a different request to your original don't you? Nobody else commented on this. What you originally requested was exactly what Dia would you provide you if set snap-to-grid and set the grid spacing appropriately. > Being a mathematician I much prefer specifying logical diagrams rather > than drawing them myself when I can. > > But I would like a LyX interface to it.. An external inset that opened a .dot file for editing in $VISUAL | $EDITOR and provided a viewer that first converted (see we really need converter support in EI) the .dot file to say png or pdf would suit your requirements. Of course as you and others suggested supporting a LaTeX package that could do this would also be nice but if you really want to type in commands and have them rendered as you type (like Mathed does) then someone has a lot of work ahead of them. Otherwise a similar approach to what I suggested for graphviz above (the .dot file) could be used for supporting any arbitrary LaTeX package -- you type the raw LaTeX but LyX is able to show a converted eps of the output. Allan. (ARRae)
