Getting ducks in example images

Question

This question led to a new package:
duckuments

There are lots of cool example pictures in LaTeX. As far as I'm aware there aren't any good example duck images ;-(

Having ducks in the example images is, of course, essential for increasing the duckness of MWEs all over Tex.SE!

Thus I'd like to know: how do I get the duck to be in the center of an example image?

\documentclass[border=5pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikzducks}
\usepackage{graphicx}


\begin{document}
\includegraphics{example-image-a}
\tikz\randuck;
\end{document}

might produce:

There is, however, a problem with putting the duck next to the picture: it looks like a more permanent duck, not there for an example but there for all time. While every good duckument does feature a duck or a dozen, making the reader able to distinguish permanent and example ducks seems essential!

However, currently

\documentclass[border=5pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikzducks}
\usepackage{graphicx}


\begin{document}
\includegraphics{example-image-duck} %or with randuck
\tikz\randuck;
\end{document}

produces, with an error message (saying there is no file for the wanted example image):

Here there is no gray border telling the reader not to expect the duck in the final version of the duckument.

Is there any way I can get the two commands:

\includegraphics{example-image-duck}
\includegraphics{example-image-randuck}

To make an image like the one in the first example, but with a duck in the place of the a?

Edit

It would be really cool, but it's probably not going to happen, to have the full tikzducks capabilities:

\includegraphics{example-image-duck[options]}

would thus act like options.

Also Torbjørn T. Posted the command:

\newcommand\ExampleDuck{ \begin{tikzpicture} \node [inner sep=0] {\includegraphics{example-image}}; \begin{scope}[shift={(-1,-1)}] \randuck \end{scope} \end{tikzpicture}}

that just needs an empty example image to be perfect. Now the only big hurdle is feeding includegraphics the result of the command \ExampleDuck if example-image-randuck is being loaded.

Yes. I sure hopes he saves the day ;-) Thanks for tagging him @naphaneal — Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen, Mar 12 '18 at 12:23
Seems to be difficult, as \includegraphics expects ready-made pdf/png/ps files (like those in the mwe package). — AlexG, Mar 12 '18 at 12:26
\newcommand\ExampleDuck{ \begin{tikzpicture} \node [inner sep=0] {\includegraphics{example-image}}; \begin{scope}[shift={(-1,-1)}] \randuck \end{scope} \end{tikzpicture}}? @naphanel: you can only ping other commenters, or users who have edited the post, Paolo wont have been notified of that. — Torbjørn T., Mar 12 '18 at 12:28
ignoring the random one, you can make \includegraphics{example-image-duck} work simply by uploading example-image-duck.{eps,png} to ctan. — David Carlisle, Mar 12 '18 at 12:32
@TorbjørnT. So we need a hook into the includegraphics and check if there is a duck, then run this command for the picture? — Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen, Mar 12 '18 at 12:33
maybe add a feature request at https://bitbucket.org/martin_scharrer/mwe ? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Mar 12 '18 at 12:51
@samcarter I just did. Just needed to figure out how bitbucket works for creating issues ;-) thanks for pointing me there — Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen, Mar 12 '18 at 12:55
@sam For randomduck It should rather be a graphicx feature request. — AlexG, Mar 12 '18 at 12:55
@samcarter Could you add the capabilities created by ulrike to the tikzducks package? — Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen, Mar 12 '18 at 13:38
I've clubbed together a small package to create "minimal working duckuments", similar to blindtext. It isn't on CTAN yet, but available on github. There is no documentation as of now. — Skillmon, Mar 13 '18 at 01:05
Why break the established pattern? Why not example-image-d? Admittedly, example-image-c would need modification if cats or cauldrons or Christmas trees were ever required, though. — cfr, Mar 13 '18 at 01:18
@cfr there already exist multiletter examples. (example-image-golden is not called example-image-g) — Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen, Mar 13 '18 at 04:12
@ThorbjørnE.K.Christensen Hmm... do you think that would change if somebody supplied elephants and frogs, in addition to ducks? — cfr, Mar 14 '18 at 02:46

Ulrike Fischer · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-12T13:24:08.513

28

Write a document example-duck:

\documentclass[tikz,multi]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikzducks}
\begin{document}
\foreach\x in {1,2,...,100}
{\tikz\randuck;}
\end{document}

and compile it.

Then you can use it like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xfp,graphicx}
\newcommand\getduck{\fpeval{randint(1,100)}}

\begin{document}

\includegraphics[page=\getduck]{example-duck}

\includegraphics[page=\getduck]{example-duck}

\includegraphics[page=\getduck]{example-duck}

\end{document}

or

Edit

as requested in the comments here a more refined example-duck (the pointy head of the witch needs a rather large background):

\documentclass[tikz,multi]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikzducks}
\begin{document}
\foreach\x in {1,2,...,100}
{\begin{tikzpicture}
 \draw[fill=gray!50!white](-0.8,-0.8)rectangle(3,3);
 \draw[gray] (-0.8,-0.8)--(3,3)
             (3,-0.8)--(-0.8,3)
             (-0.8,1.1)--++(3.8,0)
             (1.1,-0.8)--++(0,3.8)
             ;
 \randuck;
 \node [anchor=center,rounded corners,draw=darkgray,opacity=0.5,fill=lightgray,rotate=30,font=\sffamily] at (1.1,1.1) {example duck};
 \end{tikzpicture}}
\end{document}

edited Mar 12 '18 at 13:24

answered Mar 12 '18 at 12:56

Ulrike Fischer

327,261

But these ducks look like nice permanent ducks. How will my editor know that they will not be in my final duckument? I sure do need my gray boxes ;-) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:02
Really nice answer. I do realize that I could join it with the comment by @TorbjørnT. To get the gray box ;-) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:03
4

Hm. Do you want also a watermark "example-duck" over the duck? – Ulrike Fischer Mar 12 '18 at 13:06
I had not thought of that. but that would be equally nice to having the example background. – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:06
@ThorbjørnE.K.Christensen Better? – Ulrike Fischer Mar 12 '18 at 13:24
Perfect -- was to short to be a comment. But it really is enough to describe it. – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:28
Is there any way I could generate the duck duckument from the main duckument? – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:31
With -shell-escape you could do it. But imho it is more sensible to do it once and move it somewhere in the search path. Or ask @samcarter to add it to tikzducks. – Ulrike Fischer Mar 12 '18 at 13:34
You're proberbly right ;-) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:36
actually all of the functionality you have created here would be nice to have in the tikzduck pagkage (also the getduck function, just so I don't have to define it in every duckument) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:37
1

@ThorbjørnE.K.Christensen Maybe it would be better to have getduck etc in a separate package. I don't think it is worth loading the tikzducks package in every document where one wants to insert some dummy image. tikz, which is automatically loaded by the ducks is a very heavy package, which needs a lot of time to load and has a lot of potential to cause problems with other packages. Adding the the example-duck.pdf to the package sounds fine, I just don't have any experience if CTAN would like that? – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Mar 12 '18 at 13:54
fair enough. I neither have any idea how ctan works. (I've only used it for getting the documentation when I didn't have texdoc installed) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 12 '18 at 13:57
@samcarter the images from the mwe package are not a problem. But perhaps you should use a longer name, more along the line of the mwe names, e.g. example-image-duck. And you naturally could add other ducks from your showcase. – Ulrike Fischer Mar 12 '18 at 13:57

Skillmon · Answer 2 · 2020-01-09T15:55:11.837

19

The following could be used:

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{tikzducks}
\usepackage{adjustbox}

\newcommand\exampleDuck[1][]
  {%
    \adjustbox{#1}{%
      \begin{tikzpicture}
        \draw[black,fill=gray!50,thick] (0,0) rectangle (6,4);
        \draw[gray] (0,0) -- (6,4);
        \draw[gray] (0,4) -- (6,0);
        \draw[gray] (3,0) -- (3,4);
        \draw[gray] (0,2) -- (6,2);
        \node at (3,2) {\tikz\randuck;};
      \end{tikzpicture}
    }%
  }

\begin{document}
\exampleDuck[width=2cm]

\exampleDuck[height=5cm]

\exampleDuck
\end{document}

With this package you can also use the following (also on github):

\documentclass[]{article}

\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{duckuments}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{example-image-duck}% takes a random page from the pdf
\includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{example-image-a}% still working

\blindduck% print one paragraph of text

\duckument% print a small duckument

\end{document}

Result:

edited Jan 09 '20 at 15:55

answered Mar 12 '18 at 13:24

Skillmon

60,462

Thanks for your answer (I feel that the other answer is more inline with my question, hence why it's accepted). I must give you the maddest of all the props for writing a package that gives filler duck text. I feel like one should write a package containing a duck roman, just to try rivaling the lipsum package ;-) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 13 '18 at 11:31
@ThorbjørnE.K.Christensen That's the idea of the package (in addition to patching \includegraphics to work with example-image-duck). But this morning between 1am and 2am I was just to tired to write something better than the above. Feel free to commit to the package :) – Skillmon Mar 13 '18 at 11:36
I might do that at some point ;-) It's a really cool idea to have a total duckification of all example parts of all duckuments. all hail the king duck ;-) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 13 '18 at 11:38
@ThorbjørnE.K.Christensen the package also contains enumerate, itemize and description duckifications (nested and unnested). Next on the to-do-list is turning it into a *.dtx, small duckumentation and uploading on CTAN. – Skillmon Mar 13 '18 at 11:43
And writing a hundred paragraphs more on the duck story, so all text needs can be fufilled by ducks and ducks alone ;-) – Thorbjørn E. K. Christensen Mar 13 '18 at 11:52
2

@ThorbjørnE.K.Christensen uploaded it to CTAN :) – Skillmon Mar 13 '18 at 18:55
The story of the blind duck is great -- so many nice details! – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Mar 13 '18 at 22:00
@samcarter thank you very much. You might contribute. If we really want to dethrone lipsum we have to write a whole duck epos. – Skillmon Mar 13 '18 at 22:31
I have teary eyes. I don't even know why exactly. Such are the emotions over the blind duck beginning of an epos! – thymaro Mar 15 '18 at 07:27
duckuments in action! – Ignasi Mar 15 '18 at 10:29
@Ignasi great to see it spread! I have just one problem with the early usage of it. It is not contained in TeXLive atm (but already in MikTeX). Therefore one needs to install it manually if he doesn't use the latest MikTeX -- just to reproduce something on TeX.SX. Still great! – Skillmon Mar 15 '18 at 12:04
Is there any possibility get first duck, second duck etc. like example-image-a – Khaaba Apr 22 '18 at 07:38
is it possible to have the duck images as portraits, too? it would make more sense to have them, e.g. for CVs or biographies. – naphaneal Jul 03 '18 at 21:32
@Khaaba you can use the page key of graphicx, e.g., \includegraphics[page=1]{example-image-duck}. And if you actually load duckuments together with graphicx (order doesn't matter), you'll get a random duck each time. – Skillmon Jan 18 '20 at 22:19
@naphaneal example-image-duck-portrait is included (since quite some time now, just forgot to notify you it seems). – Skillmon Jan 18 '20 at 22:20

Getting ducks in example images

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