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In certain circumstances, I plan to request for users to make use of tikz-cd package instead of xy package (because the latter performs category code changes of @ \AtBeginDocument).

But, because I never used neither of them, I'd like to know what is the symmetric difference of the sets of their features.

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Denis Bitouzé
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  • My pointer went straight to the “close as too broad” button, I stopped it with some effort. ;-) – egreg Apr 15 '16 at 17:41
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    Nice! ;) I don't want to discuss which one is the best, just to know if users who would be requested to not use xy won't be deprived of crucial features. – Denis Bitouzé Apr 15 '16 at 17:47
  • I'd rather tell your users not to go the subpreambles road. ;-) – egreg Apr 15 '16 at 17:51
  • That just shows it is not opinion-based. It doesn't show the question is not too broad. What is it possible to typeset with TeX? is not opinion-based either. – cfr Apr 15 '16 at 23:08
  • @egreg That's not the users (math articles authors) who will make use of subpreambles option from standalone package: that's the class which will gather all the articles in a single volume of the journal. – Denis Bitouzé Apr 16 '16 at 11:08
  • @cfr The sets of features of both xy and tikz-cd, and hence the symmetric difference of them, are much less broad than the TeX's set of features. The purpose of my question is to get feedback from experimented users of these packages, e.g. to warn me if there is a killing feature of xy which is missing in tikz-cd. – Denis Bitouzé Apr 16 '16 at 11:13
  • I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying whether it is too broad or not. I'm simply saying that the point you made doesn't address the broadness question. – cfr Apr 16 '16 at 15:28

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In terms of features, in the strict sense, I haven noticed nearly no difference after a decade of using xypic and two years with TikZ. The big difference is in access to the features. TikZ requires the user to learn rather more to get started. Just compare the documentation for the two (I might not have made the transition if there was not such good help available here at TeX StackExchange). And then TikZ gives the user far more flexible results and easier fine control over the result than xypic. As far as I know that control could also be gotten by sufficiently sophisticated use of xypic, but would require programming skill that I do not have. I have done a little with getting the graphic to compute some of its own coordinates. That is easier in TikZ, with some help from TeX StackExchange.

Here is a good example of what xypic could do somehow, but TikZ does simply by setting a parameter: Drawing a cube with TikZ-cd

My work is all with mathematical formulas, commutative diagrams, and geometric illustrations. I have no experience with, say, trees, or displaying statistical data.

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Colin McLarty
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