Advanced Metagraf – 1

The Viewer.-

Unix version.

Mg5 in its version for Unix, incorporates a viewer making unnecessary the use of other postscripts or PDF applications available in the general O.S.

Metagraf's viewer is able to open and represent PDF files. For doing so, Mg5 uses the script “ps2pdf” available in most latex distributions. The user should take care of having this utility included in its PATH. Otherwise, he/she will not be able to use the Viewer.

The Viewer will be made visible by choosing the item/button with the name “Viewer” in Menu/Files or in the horizontal toolbar. Each time this action is done, the Viewer will appear or disappear. If the monitor screen is big enough (1280 width at least), it is recommended to maintain the viewer open at the side of Metagraf's window.

The drawing is “refreshed” and run trough Metapost, Latex, Dvips and finally ps2pdf every time the right-mouse-button is pressed. Many times, this button should be pressed in the standard use of Matagraf, so, usually, the drawing in the Viewer will be up to date. When this is not the case, just a click on this button will update the figure shown.

The interest of having the “final figure” at hand is specially important when working with Text. It also can be very useful when trying different arrow heads not shown specifically in Metagraf's screen where a standard arrow is the only one shown.



Windows Version

In Windows, it is not so common to have the scripts needed at hand, so it has been preferred to use a quite old version of Ghostview that allows a similar working method as the one with the original Viewer.

Mg5 has been tested in Windows with total satisfaction using a distribution of TeXLive of a few years ago. This version will be available to users of Metagraf if requested.

The viewer button will simply launch this application (Ghostview), that can be placed contiguous to Metagraf's screen. As in Unix, when clicking the right-mouse-button, the image on Ghostview will be updated. Nevertheless, to view it, the screen of this viewer should be clicked once. This is a very small disadvantage. On another aspect, Windows solution can have advantages, as the drawing in Ghostview can be scaled to see details of finished drawing, what is not possible with Metagraf's Viewer.

Another (small) advantage of using Windows is that updating any figure will launch, minimized, a DOS-windows. It can be seen in the tool bar at bottom of the Windows screen. It will appear a short time and then disappear. When this is done, the drawing has been updated and clicking the viewer screen, it will be shown.




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Madrid, January 2006