Untitled Document

Tips for creating nice .eps files under Linux

we would like to:
(i) create light .eps files, not pixelized and with a bounding box.
(ii) create nice .eps filefrom free plotting software such as Gnuplot (2D and 3D) or Xmgrace (2D).
(iii) use Latex fonts, or better, include Latex formulas in the plots.

Useful websites :

Languages and libraries specialized for files handling and interaction with Operating System:

Awk
Perl : CPAN, PoscriptSimple
Python : documentation, python and postscript, PYX, Image Library

Miscelleanous:

Useful Free softwares (manpages are particularly well documents):

Postscript : wikipedia page
Adobe : fonts, postscript and pdf conventions.
DejaVu : much smaller file sizes than postscript and pdf, useful for archiving.
gs : ghostscript, everything for PostScript,...
gv or ggv : to view .eps files. Enables exportation to other formats (jpeg, pdf...).
ps2epsi : creates an .eps file from a .ps file but does not always work.
dvips -E : creates an .eps file from a .dvi file comming from a Latex source code. Usually, the bounding box is not correctly generated so use fixbb to fix it.
epstopdf : creates a .pdf from an .eps file.
ps2pdf : creates .pdf from .ps files.
pdfTex : writes pdf from Latex.
xfig : vectorial drawing. Able to generated .tex and .epic output.
gnuplot : plotting 2D and 3D. Can be interpreted by Latex.
xmgrace : 2D Plotting. Combined with psfrag, it is possible to include Latex formulas.
latex : the best way to include Latex fonts in your .eps file. PsTricks package. Xy-pic package.
pstoedit : creates vectorial format from PS or PDF.
StarDraw : vectorial drawing software within the StarOffice distribution.
skencil : vectorial drawing software.

Useful Non-Free softwares :

Adobe Illustrator : very powerful vectorial graphics tools to improve your files. see Kevin Beach webpage for tips.
Matlab :
Mathematica :

Preliminaries:

if you are working with a configuration of linux which has not the dot "." as a standard format for floating points data (for instance the coma "," in french), you can add the following two lines in your .bashrc file:
LC_NUMERIC=en_US
export LC_NUMERIC
this will make the job without too many side effects.
if you want to create a bounding box for an .eps file which is not bounded, you can use the fixbb script (available in Bash+Awk here, or in Perl there)
$ ./fixbb foo.eps
the results you'll have might depend on the configuration you have but the methods are quite generic.

Examples:

the picture/epic/pstricks environments are a simple way to create nice and light .eps files with Latex fonts. For instance you can construct the pyrochlore lattice:

from the tex file Pyrochlore.tex and the CreateEps script using:
$ ./CreateEps Pyrochlore
this will create the bounded Pyrochlore.eps file.
you can also use the Latex epic environment to constructs plots from data with the help of an awk script to obtain:
which has nice Latex fonts. This was created using :
$ gawk -f draw.awk local.dat > Current_pattern_color.tex; CreateEps Current_pattern_color
The result is Current_pattern_color.eps.
with Gnuplot, you can use the output redirection to .tex to include Latex fonts in your .eps files such as in:

this file was created using:
$ gnuplot Chi0Map.gnu
where you need the Chi0Map.dat data file and also the tot.tex file and the fixbb file. You'll get the Plot.eps file.
If you want to add Latex fonts to an .eps file created with Xmgrace. The simplest way to do that is to use psfrag and to rebuild the .eps file with latex and dvips. Here is what you can get:

from the BandsDiagram.agr file and using the CreateEpsWithPSFrag script. The output file is New_BandsDiagram.eps.
With Xfig, you can do the same tip with psfrag but, depending on your version of Xfig, you can also generate some .tex file that you can compile with latex followed by dvips. A problem with Xfig is that it has a discretization process which lowers the quality of files. For instance, if you import an .eps file as a picture into Xfig, you'll lost the vectorial nature of your original file. Still, you can use the pstoedit software to transform your .eps file into a correct Xfig file.
You can merge two .eps file with Latex. For example, the picture

has been generated with an .eps file from Xfig and one from Latex using the MergeEps script. The result is New_Gauges.eps.