phystricks
phystricks : use python to create your pictures to be inserted in LaTeX

General introduction

The purpose of this module is to produce pictures to be inserted in your LaTeX document using only python and Sage techniques. The motto is :

«*if Sage can compute it, LaTeX can draw it*»

What is LaTeX ? What is tikz ?

If you don't know what is LaTeX, simply read the description on wikipedia. For the moment you just have to know that LaTeX is a text editor with the same ideas of markdown or wiki, except that

tikz is a set of macros for creating pictures in LaTeX. The weakness of Tikz for producing scientific pictures are :

What do people do ?

People use an external program to produce the pictures and then include them as pdf, png or worse : ps ... even worse : epsi.

What's the problem with this approach ? If you want to name a point "A", it will appears with the font of the external program, not the font of you current LaTeX file, and you cannot use the LaTeX macros in the picture.

What is phystricks

What problem do we solve ?

Including complex figures in LaTeX is always difficult because you

How do we solve ?

phystricks is a python (Sage in fact) module defining classes like point, segment, parametric curve, ... and many geometric relations between them. You describe your picture using Python and phystricks creates the tikz code to be included in your LaTeX file.

Example

1 # -*- coding: utf8 -*-
2 
3 from phystricks import *
4 def VSJOooJXAwbVEt():
5  pspict,fig = SinglePicture("VSJOooJXAwbVEt")
6  pspict.dilatation(1)
7 
8  O=Point(0,0)
9 
10  circle=Circle( O,2 ) # center, radius
11 
12  # Points are parametrized by their angle (degree)
13  A=circle.get_point(130)
14  B=circle.get_point(220)
15  tg=circle.get_tangent_vector(30)
16 
17  # dist : the distance between the circle and the mark.
18  # text : the LaTeX code that will be placed there.
19  A.put_mark(dist=0.3,text="$\lim_{s}(F\circ\gamma')$",pspict=pspict)
20  B.put_mark(dist=0.3,text="$K$",pspict=pspict)
21 
22  pspict.DrawGraphs(circle,A,tg,B)
23 
24  fig.no_figure()
25  fig.conclude()
26  fig.write_the_file()

The you compile the picture with Sage :

1 ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
2 │ SageMath Version 7.0, Release Date: 2016-01-19 │
3 │ Type "notebook()" for the browser-based notebook interface. │
4 │ Type "help()" for help. │
5 └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
6 sage: attach("<filename>.py")
7 sage: VSJOooJXAwbVEt()

Now the file Fig_VSJOooJXAwbVEt.pstricks is created and you just have to add the following lines in you LaTeX document :

1 \begin{center}
2  \input{Fig_VSJOooJXAwbVEt.pstricks}
3 \end{center}

What you get is :

Alt text

As you see, taking the tangent vector is a simple as calling the method get_tangent_vector with as argument the angle on the circle.

Notice that :

The trick is that phystricks does not only produces the tikz code for the picture, but also make LaTeX write the size of the box in an auxiliary file. Thus in a second pass of phystricks, the size of the box is known and the label can be correctly placed.

The LaTeX code inserted in your picture is compiled by LaTeX in the same time as your document.

More informations

For more informations you can read the documentation. An look at the real live examples :

This is my main page.