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I recently found this package on CTAN by Don: https://ctan.org/pkg/picmac

But there does not seem to be any documentation online about it, could someone provide some minimal examples of it? Apparently it can do some LaTeXy stuff in plain TeX.

1 Answers1

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It is a port of latex picture mode \begin{picture} \put... to plain tex

As seen in this answer LaTeX can use picture mode for technical drawings, and this makes the same available in plain:

enter image description here



\input picmac


\unitlength=1pt


\beginpicture(200,100)(0,0)
\put(30,40){\line(1,0){150}}
\put(30,40){\line(0,1){60}}
\put(30,100){\line(1,0){20}}
\put(50,100){\line(1,-4){10}}
\put(60,60){\line(1,0){100}}
\put(160,60){\line(1,-1){20}}
\put(100,50){\line(0,-1){80}}
\put(130,50){\line(0,-1){80}}
\put(100,-30){\line(1,0){30}}
\put(100,61){\line(0,1){49}}
\put(130,61){\line(0,1){49}}
\put(100,110){\line(1,0){30}}
\endpicture


\bye
David Carlisle
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  • That makes sense thank you! Do you know if it's possible to draw curve lines with it? –  Nov 27 '22 at 15:00
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    @atrst yes it has qbezier curves, not sure if that is identical to the latex quadratic curves, probably is. I would not use that this century though, it is positioning hundreds of . to "draw" a curve, which will always look clunky compared to real scalable curves drawn with PostScript or pdf \special for which many macros notably tikz or pstricks are available, even in plain – David Carlisle Nov 27 '22 at 15:48
  • I see, not the most elegant solution –  Nov 27 '22 at 15:52
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    @atrst smilarly the lines are not drawn they are made by positioning multiple characters using a custom font with loads of / at different slopes. it makes portable dvi with no dependence on dvips or pdftex or any other back end and it was clever (and big) tex code by 1985 standards, but in 2022..... – David Carlisle Nov 27 '22 at 15:57