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I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

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Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#51

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

mhh__ wrote: post #48

One of my pet theories/takes is that if any billionaire wants to make science more productive they need to fund a modern replacement of LaTeX and really streamline flows for things like this. TikZ in particular but latex in general has awful compile times in part because of it's ancient design.

> modern replacement of LaTeX

It's one of the most reliable and useful pieces of software, and it seems to be doing just fine. Most efforts at modernization focus on extension, either with packages, other languages, GUIs, etc.

> latex in general has awful compile times in part because of it's ancient design.

I would expect the "ancient" to mean it's faster, as it was designed for a more restricted resource environment, and Knuth tailors optimal algorithms for each task. For example, the single-pass is ergonomically a pain, because you often have to run it multiple times to get the final output but it also makes it faster.

Do you have ideas about alternative architectures that would improve performance?

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#52

Post by msravi »

I use Geogebra to draw, and then export as PGF/TikZ. You can then edit the code to fine-tune or make any modifications. Works very well. The advantage is that you can also include plots in the figures along with SVG. Not sure if Inkscape allows that.

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#53

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

lqr wrote: post #35
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know Inkscape, you'll feel right at home with Sketch. The extra functionality I'm talking is usually unlocked with additional hotkeys and visual helpers that appear by themselves when dragging things around. I'm not exaggerating about 10x productivity boost, it is really that big.

Looked it up, it seems more targeted to page layout applications. Is it really that much better for something like a drawing in a math textbook?

For that specific goal, maybe, no. Sketch really excels when doing vector designs that are going to be presented in a raster displays, so a lot of its features revolves around a pixel grid.

Inkscape does not care about pixel grid, being an SVG vector editor, but it still could use some modern interface tricks, like various stroke/outline options, nudge settings and rulers for measuring distances between objects.

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#55

Post by rg111 »

baby wrote: post #7

When I started writing papers I was really bullish on tikz. I thought that professional looking papers should have figures that were precise to the mm. But the time it takes to get something useful is just insane. I quickly moved to the vectorial drawing tool I had handy: keynote. It’s really not made for that, but it has enough features that you can quickly use it to do pretty things. I ended up using keynote to do…

> I quickly moved to the vectorial drawing tool I had handy: keynote. It’s really not made for that [...]

You would be surprised at how many figures are drawn with PowerPoint on papers at top Machine Learning conferences.

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#56

Post by amelius »

bzxcvbn wrote: post #37
amelius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until it doesn't and you have to redo your entire drawing in another tool ... It is always better to choose a tool where you're least likely to run into a dead-end street.

If you know in advance that you're not going to need a more powerful, more complicated/expensive/... tool, then it's okay and even recommended to use the "lesser" tool. If I need to screw in a few screws, am I better off buying a small screwdriver or a professional 18V screwdriver/drill combo with 24 add-ons? Who knows, it depends on my projects and my skills, but it's entirely possible that buying the $5 screwdriver…

That's a bad example because you can always switch to the powertool if needed without building your project from scratch.

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#57

Post by amelius »

emi2k01 wrote: post #44
amelius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: how do you add a label to an arrow (such that it stays on the arrow if you move it)?

You can select the label and the arrow and press control+G to create a group. You can also do the opposite, pin the arrow to the label so that if the label moves the arrow follows: double click the arrow to see the path points, select an end point and move it on top of the label until you see the bounding box of the label.

I tried it but it only semi-worked. The label moves with the arrow, but if I move one side of the arrow (by moving the box it is attached to) the label does not move. (Note: I want the label on the arrow, not on its endpoints).

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#58

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

sicp-enjoyer wrote: post #51
mhh__ wrote: post #48

One of my pet theories/takes is that if any billionaire wants to make science more productive they need to fund a modern replacement of LaTeX and really streamline flows for things like this. TikZ in particular but latex in general has awful compile times in part because of it's ancient design.

> modern replacement of LaTeX It's one of the most reliable and useful pieces of software, and it seems to be doing just fine. Most efforts at modernization focus on extension, either with packages, other languages, GUIs, etc. > latex in general has awful compile times in part because of it's ancient design. I would expect the "ancient" to mean it's faster, as it was designed for a more restricted resource environmen…

> It's one of the most reliable and useful pieces of software, and it seems to be doing just fine. Most efforts at modernization focus on extension, either with packages, other languages, GUIs, etc.

I love LaTeX and use it everyday, and in particular I have no gripes with compile time, but honestly it's only doing just fine (in terms of usage) because there's no alternative, not due to its own merits. Because the UX is ridiculously outdated.

- Needing to compile 2 or 3 times to get the document right (and not having an option of doing it automatically or been warned about it).

- Need to include an unusual Unicode character? Good luck navigating the different packages for character encodings, font encodings, etc. A couple of days ago we needed to include Қ (Tajik/Uzbek/Kazakh character) and after a few hours of googling and desperately trying several solutions that in theory should work, we ended up including a vector image of the character created in Inkscape (funnily enough the workaround is less bad than it sounds, because the Inkscape image actually has the character as a character, and latex is smart enough to make it copy-pastable as any other text character). Honestly in 2022 any software should Just Work(tm) with Unicode, period. It's trivial to write Қ in a modern browser and have it appear in HN, for example.

- Interactions between packages making a mess, so when you want to pitch your paper to a new journal and adopt their template, multiple errors start to come up, and after trying to decipher some cryptic messages, you find the hard way that some table package you're using is incompatible with the journal template.

- Related to the previous... error messages are sometimes extremely cryptic. Especially when something you do causes an error to be caught inside a package you're using, and you get pointed to a line that doesn't even relate to your code at hand.

- There is nothing to ease the learning curve, so entire scientific fields won't touch it. Why can't we have something that is as simple as Markdown if you just want to create a simple document with headers and lists, and where complexity is added as you need it?

I use LaTeX because all alternatives I know are worse but to me, it's a clear example of a local minimum where we are stuck. It would take a lot of effort to create something better so no one does it, and as a result we have to do with an UX from the 80s. I just wish people wouldn't act as if it were the bee's knees every time its obvious aging is mentioned.

Re: I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape (2019)

#60

Post by srean »

procedurecall wrote: post #41

With all the discussion here about alternative programs to make vector graphics for mathematical figures, I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned Ipe ( https://ipe.otfried.org/ ), given it's far and away the most popular tool in my field (and has good native support for LaTeX expressions). It certainly doesn't have all the features that Inkscape supports (although it does have quite a lot of features), but the fe…

Ipe is to my mind the rightful moral heir to Xfig. Love both for their support for latex.
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