Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!educ-isis!teexdwu
From: teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: What *is* Pictex?
Message-ID: <1990Dec3.105316.22787@ioe.lon.ac.uk>
Date: 3 Dec 90 10:53:16 GMT
References: <16639@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: teexdwu@ioe.lon.ac.uk (DOMINIK WUJASTYK)
Organization: Institute of Education University of London
Lines: 22

In article <16639@csli.Stanford.EDU> crimmins@csli.stanford.edu (Mark Crimmins) writes:
>
>There has been a successful concerted effort to remove the Pictex
>manual from circulation, in order to protect the interests of Pictex's
>author.  

I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, the PicTeX manual was never distributed
in the first place.  When PicTeX first came out, Michael made copies of
the macros available from a Chicago ftp site (if I recall correctly) 
and there *was* a DVI file distributed which contained the first page
or two of the manual, just enough to tell you what PicTeX was.  This
was useful, of course.  If people have been busily deleting this, they
shouldn't.

PicTeX is a macro set for drawing graphs and other shapes.  It can read
a table of values and plot them.  It can also draw almost anything you
want, but at a price in machine memory and speed.  It is a wonderful
package by all accounts, but for more than trivial uses you will 
probably need a Big TeX and a fast machine.  It's method of working is
to construct the drawings from rules and closesly spaced dots.

Dominik