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Re: RE:graphics export to LAtek and Word

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg22982] Re: RE:graphics export to LAtek and Word
  • From: "Atul Sharma" <atulksharma at yahoo.com>
  • Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2000 14:44:49 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <8ck2rj$get@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

A subject dear to my heart, at least recently!

Exporting plots:
The nicest images require you to use the Save Selection As command (edit
menu) and specify EPS format. You can also use Export as either EPS or
EPSTIFF, the latter including a TIFF preview for the EPS figure. You can
also save as a bitmap image or export as a gif, though the resolution
suffers, particularly for the printed copy. If you need publication quality,
you should use the EPS format.

You can then insert the  figure into a TeX or Word document (Insert:
Picture: From File in Word 97). If you use the bitmap or gif format, the
result is WYSIWYG. If you use EPS, two minor problems need to be dealt with:
1) In Word, the EPS figure is seen on screen only as a placeholder, though
it prints nicely to a postscript printer or if you have a postscript
interpretor (I use Ghostview/Ghostscript, which is free).  If you include a
TIFF preview, Word can display the TIFF image on screen and print the EPS
image, though obviously the screen output is not as crisp. If you have the
GhostView/Ghostscript software, you can also use it to add other previews,
including simple .bmp which Word can display. 2) If using EPS, your
postscript interpretor needs access to the WRI math fonts. This means
pointing Ghostscript at the type 1 fonts in the System Files folder of
Mathematica. Detailed directions are available from a FAQ by Paul Hinton at
the WRI documentation center. You can also specify using system fonts (like
Courier) in place of the math fonts when producing your figure.

Exporting formulae:
I recently had to prepare a fairly detailed mathematical appendix for
publication, and I was having a more difficult time exporting formulae in a
form that could be viewed on the screen. Having solved this with
considerable help from this forum, I will summarize my preferences below.
For final publication using the Mathematica fonts, use either the Virtual
TeX Fonts package from Jens-Peer Kuska ( with TeXSave) or EPS format, as
described above.

If you goal is just to view the formulae on screen, you can export as bitmap
or gif (or save selection as bitmap, and then convert to gif if you wish
using MS PhotoEditor or equivalent). These can be inserted into your Word
document as pictures. A bug in the procedure leads to a rather curious
truncation of the resulting images, and a recent thread saw two palettes
which modify Export to allow you to produce gif images without the annoying
line breaks (see comments from P. Hinton and  Xing Jing Li ). Either allows
you to export the formulae for a web page or on-line viewing in a word
processor document.

If you want publication quality but want to avoid TeX, I have had less
success with high resolution gifs using the palettes mentioned. A better
solution is to save the formulae as EPS and insert them into your document
just as described for the plots. Alternate solutions included converting the
EPS images to high resolution gifs (between GhostView and ImageMagik, you
can get arbitrary resolution gifs without having to buy new software. Use
the ppmraw printer driver to convert the EPS to ppm and then convert the ppm
to gif using the convertor in ImageMagik. Round about, but it works). My
preferred solution  is to use Adobe Acrobat distiller to create a postscript
and pdf version of the document, which can be viewed by anyone with Acrobat
reader. This allows essentially one step conversion to a format suitable for
on screen viewing and publication. For publication, the math fonts will need
to be embedded (and legal permission obtained from WRI). Paul Hinton's
package in MathSource (emmathfnt ) will allow you to do so in ps documents.
Adobe distiller can also be set up to embed the math fonts (type 1
postscript) into .ps and .pdf formats. I only recently discovered the
Acrobat distiller option, and I really find it very convenient, though
admittedly not free.

Hope that helps.

Atul




Deborah Leddon wrote in message <8ck2rj$get at smc.vnet.net>...
>Hello,
>Is there a way to export a Mathematica plot into another word
>processor such as LAtek and MS Word 97?
>
>Thanks if anyone can help.
>



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