How smaller can we go in LaTeX

Question

I want to visualise a Big TikZ figure and I need to have very small font for it to fit into the picture. 1000-10000 times smaller than \tiny command how do I go about doing this if that's even possible ? Thanks for any hints.

Here is a rough idea of what the figure I am looking to fit into a single page, keep in mind that I'm looking for 100000 lines instead of a dozen as shown below:


\begin{document}
\newpage
[\begin{tikzcd}
\bullet&\
\bullet&&&\bullet&\
\bullet&&&\bullet&&\
&&\bullet&&\bullet&&&\
\bullet&&\bullet&&\bullet&&&&\bullet&&\
&&&\bullet&&\bullet&&&&&\
\bullet&&&&\bullet&&\bullet &&&&&\bullet&&\
&&&\bullet&&&&&&&&\bullet&&\bullet&&&\
&&&\bullet&&&&&&\bullet&&\bullet&&&&&&\bullet&&\
&\bullet&&&&&&\bullet&&&\bullet&&&&\
\bullet&&\bullet&&&&\bullet&&\bullet&&&&\bullet&&&&&&&&\ 
\end{tikzcd}]
\end{document}

\fontsize{1pt}{1.5pt}\selectfont or use the scale options in tikz — David Carlisle, Dec 08 '23 at 13:56
1000 times smaller? Are you serious? We're talking about micrometres... — campa, Dec 08 '23 at 13:57
David Carlisle, I want to go even smaller than that. To give an idea I want the font size to be \fontsize{0.0001pt}{0.0015pt} — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 13:57
Yes, It's a very large picture. Essentially each line contains 10000+ $\bullet$ — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 13:59
How do you plan to view your document? Most pdf viewers have a fixed range how far the allow to zoom in/out. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Dec 08 '23 at 14:10
https://t.ly/UnMuH This is only the beginning of the graph and it already difficult to zoom out — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 14:14
Is your whole figure just dots or do you also have actual text? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Dec 08 '23 at 14:17
You could draw them as circles instead. This way you can control their size much easier than changing the font size. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Dec 08 '23 at 14:18
@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Can you please elaborate further, it would be very helpful if you could provide an example with just one circle. Thanks — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 14:20
you can have that font size if you want (as long as no one ever needs to read it) — David Carlisle, Dec 08 '23 at 14:22
@HomerSimpson Given that your question does not contain a test document, I'd rather not create a new document from scratch. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Dec 08 '23 at 14:24
Essentially what I want to see when zooming out is to confirm a conjecture about the alignment of the dots. so I presume than when zooming out I can see the pattern emerge more clearly. — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 14:24
@samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, would you like me to provide you with one ? I'll do so right away — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 14:25
From the comments it is pretty clear this is an XY Problem. You seem to want to draw some array of dots. And you are representing the array using Tikz-CD (best that I can tell), and using $\bullet$ for each dot. But for your use case almost certainly just representing your visualization as a bitmap image would be better and easier. — Willie Wong, Dec 08 '23 at 14:26
Thanks for your comment @WillieWong, you're actually right. I am somewhat aware that this is an XY problem, but before taking a step back and trying a whole new approach, I need to see that the numerical data matches what's conjectured. I hope you understand. — HomerSimpson, Dec 08 '23 at 14:47
@HomerSimpson If you have this as numerical data, use a plotting tool like pgfplots and don't do this by hand! For your amount of data maybe something R, root or matplotlib would be better suited — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Dec 08 '23 at 14:48
The pict2e package should support \circle*{1sp}, although I haven't actually tried it. — John Kormylo, Dec 08 '23 at 15:48
If you are aware this is an XY problem, the solution is to tell us about the X and Y, not tell us the X and begin a 20 comment thread while we give you different options for Y. — Teepeemm, Dec 08 '23 at 16:24
Possible duplicate: How to get an even smaller font size than \tiny? — Werner, Dec 08 '23 at 16:43

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 08 '23 at 14:35

5

Using tikz-cd and \bullet to draw circles seems a rather complicate approach. You could directly use TikZ to draw circles wherever and in whatever size you want (as long as you stay within the numerical limits of TikZ):

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[red, radius=0.1]
\fill (0,0) circle;
\fill (0,2) circle;
\fill (0,3) circle;
\fill (0,4) circle;
\fill (2,3.5) circle;
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

answered Dec 08 '23 at 14:35

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

158,329

4

Just for fun: Here, the smallest radius at which the PDF viewer still shows me something at a magnification of 10000% is 500sp. ;-) – cabohah Dec 08 '23 at 15:02

How smaller can we go in LaTeX

1 Answers1