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From: wyle@inf.ethz.ch (Mitchell Wyle)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: sccs, tex makefiles, xfig, hints
Message-ID: <27530@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Date: 15 Mar 91 11:00:34 GMT
Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch
Reply-To: wyle@inf.ethz.ch (Mitchell Wyle)
Organization: ETH, Zurich
Lines: 78

Like many of you, I use fig to draw figues, then fig2dev -L latex
to transform the figures to latex.

In the main document, I'll have entries such as:

% ------------------------------- figure 1 -------------------------------
\begin{figure}[h]\label{overview}
\input f1.tex
\caption{System Overview}
\end{figure}
% ------------------------------- figure 1 -------------------------------


and of course fig2dev -L latex converts f1.fig to f1.tex.

I recently discovered the wonderful world of implicit rules in makefiles.
The makefile for the current paper I am working on is:


.SUFFIXES:	.fig .tex

.fig.tex:
	fig2dev -L latex $*.fig > $*.tex

.tex.dvi:
	latex $*.tex

all:	wan2.dvi

wan2.dvi:	f1.tex f2.tex wan2.tex f1.fig f2.fig f3.tex
	latex wan2.tex



The neato thing about make is that it knows how to generate the .tex
figures from the .fig figures; I just have to tell it that the main
paper depends on the .tex versions of the figures; if the .fig version
changes, make knows to re-run the fig2dev!


* * *

I also use sccs to control versions of the figures and tex documents.  My
documents all have something like:

% sccs version control:   %Z%%M%    %I%   %E% %U%

as the first line.  I hacked xfig to add the line:

# %Z%%M%    %I%   %E% %U%

after the version number line at the top.  Then I can sccs deledit to
checkpoint versions of the paper as it evolves.  I can also go back to an
earlier version when I accidentially delete too much text.  I also hacked
fig2dev to set the line-thickness on boxes, horizontal, and vertical lines.
The restriction to \thinlines or thicklines is unecessary; read page 199 of
the Latex book.

I suppose I should send diffs to the fig2dev authors....

Of course the nice thing about using xfig and fig2dev -L latex is that the
final document is 100% in latex so I can preview it, send it electronically,
use emtex at home on dos ozTex on the macs, etc. without worrying about
having a postscript(tm) printer, a dvi2xxx which will do the \special
inclusion right, previewers which understand \special and all the other
hassles.

* * *

If the maintainer of the comp.text.tex FAQ is reading this, I would
appreciate your adding these hints if you think they are appropriate, i.e.

How can I maintain version control of my tex documents?

sccs is available on most Unix systems; a comment at the top of your
document such as:

% sccs version control:   %Z%%M%    %I%   %E% %U%