Setting preferences

General

• Look'n feel : let you choose your favorite Look'n Feel ; defaults to metal (a SUN look'n feel) on startup.
• Language : English, French,...

• Undoable steps : let you specify the number of undoable steps ; 0 means that undo is deactivated.

• Default content-type : this is the default formatter used when creating a new drawing. The preferred way is to use PsTricks, because then you get a real high quality rendering (colours, textures, shadows,...), but if you don't want to rely on add-ons packages, simply choose the Emulated LaTeX content-type (then you'll get only a minimal subset of those graphical attributes, i.e. no-filling, no colours,...). The epic/eepic choice is a reasonable choice for those who don't need colours and textures, but are willing to draw ellipses, arcs, polygons,... with a satisfying rendering quality. Note also that PsTricks uses PostScript in the background so if your DVI Viewer dooesn't handle PostScript special, use dvips first to convert your DVI file to a PS file, then run ghostscript to display it.

You must restart jPicEdt if you want a new language choice to take effect.

LaTeX, epic and PsTricks tab panes

Let you set format specific parameters. One thing common to all formats is the prolog/epilog string, and is used when running LaTeX on your picture from within jPicEdt.
These strings get prepended/appended to the text generated by the formatter (i.e. the text starting with \begin{picture}) so that the resulting text is a "stand-alone" LaTeX file, and can be directly compiled by LaTeX. The default prolog/epilog simply include necessary packages, but you can add your own macro definition here, so that, for example, arguments of text-boxes which use macros of your own are compiled properly.

Unitlength is always set to 1 mm at the beginning of the saved file. OK, this is rather stringent, but (useless to say) you sure CAN load a file containing a different value ! jPicEdt will simply scale the drawing accordingly. (There's actually another efficient way to scale the entire drawing by using the SCALE tool in the tool-bar).

LaTeX picture environment specific parameters

• Linethickness : set the default linethickness (in mm). This value is used when loading a TeX file only, when no \linethickness has been found.
• Max LaTeX circle/disk diameter : this depends on your own LaTeX installation. You'll have to set it to the biggest circle/disk diameter contained in your LaTeX font (actually, 14mm for circles, and 5.4mm for disks, which incidentally are the default values, match almost every TeX distribution).

LaTeX picture environment only allows for a small number of line slopes ; in emulated mode, jPicEdt use the \multiput command to emulate lines of any slope, using a set of very closed and tiny horizontal or vertical segments. As a result, lines of any thickness can now be drawn (FYI, the \thickness command doesn't work with standard slanted lines).

• Emulated line segment length : this is the length of the small segments that compose emulated lines.
• Emulated line max slope : when do we have to switch between an almost (hence emulated) vertical emulated line and a TRUE vertical line ?
• Emulated circle segment length : this is the length of the small segments that compose emulated circles (that is, circles having a radius greater than Max-LaTeX-Circle-Diameter). Note : big disk can't be emulated using LaTeX picture environment commands, but they can if you decide to use the eepic package.

External commands

How it works...

When running LaTeX/DVI/... from within jPicEdt, a LaTeX file is created on the fly by jPicEdt in the standard temp' directory of the OS you're using (e.g. c:\windows\temp), or another temp' dir if you changed it (see Directories panel). The variety of operating systems and LaTeX distributions made it impossible to design a scheme for running external commands that wouldn't rely on scripts (e.g. batches under DOS, AppleScript on MacOS).

So the best thing to do is (as for me) to use external scripts which call the adequate programs (latex, dviwin32.exe/xdvi,...). You can pass argument to this script by using the predefinite symbols "{p}" and "{f}".

• "{p}" gets replaced by your temp. directory (this is where the LaTeX file gets created), e.g. /tmp/ under Linux, c:\windows\temp under Win9x, etc...
• "{f}" gets replaces by the name of the temp. file (usually "jpicedt" with a random number appended to it, e.g. "jpicedt542163"), w/o any "tex" extension.
• {i} gets replaced by the location of the "add-ons" directory where some scripts already reside for some LaTeX distributions.

#!/bin/sh
cd $1
$2 $3

Suppose this script was saved in the "add-ons" directory, then the command line which appears under the "external-commands"'s tab in the preferences-setting tabsheet will be typesetted as follows:

{i}/ext_proc {p} latex {f}

(where "latex" can be replaced by any appropriate name, e.g. xdvi, kghostview, kdvi,...).

This will lead, once "{p}" and "{f}" have been replaced, to :

ext_proc /tmp latex jpicedt46858

which finally yields,

cd /tmp
latex jpicedt46858

(latex accept a file w/o extension on the command line, otherwise add ".tex" manually in your script).

There currently exist scripts and predefined configurations for the following LaTeX distribution :

• Unix : TeTeX
• Windows : MikTeX, WinGUT, and ScientificWorkplace.