Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: ANNOUNCE: PSfrag 2.0 for LaTeX2e released
Distribution: world
Followup-To: comp.text.tex
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The release version of PSfrag for LaTeX2e can be found at CTAN
sites in the directory macros/latex/contrib/supported/psfrag.

What is PSfrag?
---------------

Many drawing and graphics packages produce output in PostScript, but
do not support the inclusion of equations and other scientific text
of which LaTeX is capable. Likewise, many LaTeX users simply find the
various LaTeX graphics packages too clumsy, and prefer the familiar
GUI of a PostScript-generating graphics tool.

PSfrag provides the best of both worlds, by allowing the user to
replace arbitrary text in Encapsulated PostScript files with arbitrary
LaTeX constructions. One can place a simple text "anchor" in the
graphics file to denote the position of a desired LaTeX equation (for
example), and PSfrag will automatically remove that anchor and replace
it with the properly sized, aligned, and rotated LaTeX equation.

The full documentation for PSfrag found in the release contains
examples and usage instructions.

To use PSfrag...
----------------

...you will need:

* LaTeX2e and the "graphics" package.
* The "dvips" PostScript driver (courtesy Tom Rokicki). The ability of
  PSfrag to support other DVI-to-PS drivers will depend on the 
  continuing development of the "graphics" package. I hope to have
  support for every DVI-to-PS driver supported by "graphics" in
  the near future.
* Perl 4.036 or later.
* The Ghostscript PostScript interpreter.

These last two programs are necessary to process Encapsulated
PostScript figures and ready them for PSfrag.

(IMPORTANT) Changes from LaTeX 2.09 PSfrag
------------------------------------------

This is a major release of PSfrag, and its operation has changed as
much as LaTeX itself has of late.

* As past users of PSfrag are aware, the PSfrag system must first
  process each Encapsulated PostScript file to determine the position
  and rotation of each piece of text in the figure. In LaTeX2e, this
  information is stored _in the original PostScript file_ as a set of
  additional Document Structuring Comments. Before PSfrag 2.0, this
  information was stored in a separate file. These comments have NO
  effect on the original PostScript file. (PSfrag 2.0 does, however,
  have the ability to read old-style PSfrag info files, for
  back-compatibility purposes.)

* A new alignment mode, "B" (baseline), has been added. This causes the
  alignment point to occur at the baseline of the text instead of at the
  true bottom of the bounding box. The default alignment has been
  changed from "bl" to "Bl".

* Since LaTeX2e does not support dvips' epsf.sty macros, (although they 
  do happen to work), PSfrag 2.0 has been designed around the "graphics"
  package instead. Therefore, you must either include the PostScript
  figures with \includegraphics, or use the "epsf.sty" wrapper provided
  with PSfrag 2.0 (or any other wrapper, for that matter). The "epsf.sty"
  package should provide seamless back-compatibility with your old 
  documents, too.

* The scaling and resizing operators in "graphics.sty" will scale the
  PSfrag text as well. To prevent this from happening (i.e., to maintain
  the old behavior), use the key-value sizing commands of
  "graphicx.sty", or use the LaTeX2e-ified "epsf.sty" or "epsfig.sty".

Changes from the BETA release
-----------------------------

PSfrag 2.0 has undergone beta testing, and as a result a few changes
have been made:

--- numerous bug fixes.
--- Support for both methods of naming LaTeX 2.09-style "*frag"
    files is supported: "example.eps"-->"example.epsfrag", and
    "example.eps"-->"example.frag". If you are running on UNIX,
    it will always look for both (in the above order). Of course,
    this is irrelevant in LaTeX2e mode.
--- the ps2frag script now handles both LaTeX 2.09 and LaTeX 2e 
    modes. In other words, it will generate '*frag' files for
    your figures if you specify the '-209' option; so it can
    completely replace the LaTeX-209 script.
--- the package option '209files' has been changed to '209mode'.
--- A complementary option, '2emode', has been provided when LaTeX2e
    is run in 2.09 compatibility mode, which allows documents which
    must remain in 2.09 style for other reasons to access the full
    functionality of LaTeX2e's PSfrag (the resulting documents may
    only be processed by LaTeX2e, however).
--- ps2frag.ps has been included in psfrag.dtx, so it can be
    documented more completely.
--- the documentation has been broken out into a separate file.
    psfrag.dtx still contains the commented code, but the users
    guide is now in pfgguide.{tex,ps}.

Bugs? What Bugs?
----------------

PSfrag 2.0 has undergone a beta test, and I have personally have used
it on a significant number of figures. Its back-compatibility mode has
undergone testing as well. This is not a commercial package, so you
can expect it to be bug-free. Just kidding!

If you have problems, bug reports, or improvement suggestions, please
send them to the PSfrag maintainer's mailing list,

psfrag@rascals.stanford.edu

You may be asked to supply examples to demonstrate the behavior you
wish to have corrected or improved.

This is a majordomo mailing list; feel free to join if you would like
to actively participate in PSfrag development. It is not a general
user's list; if demand is high, however, one can be created.

Thanks for using PSfrag!
