I am having a HELL of a time with what should be really simple
graphics work.
I have a text file containing aligned text (scientific data),
that is, it is essentially ascii. I need to annotate this
text with various graphics and enclose some of the text in
colored or shaded boxes.
I have Killustrator, tgif, staroffice, and xpaint. NONE of
these apps can handle this SIMPLE task. Killustrator only
accepts *.kil format files and will not import text. Staroffice
is essentially useless because it can't properly format the
text - because it doesn't have any monospaced fonts available
(what's up with that?!). tgif will accept ps, eps, and a few
other formats, and it is this app that I have been fighting
with all day. I THOUGHT it was going to work but it ends up
screwing up the output so as to make the app useless. The
problem:
I had a simple text file that NO graphics app can import or
use. I had to open it in netscape and print it to a file
in postscript format. I then used pstoedit to convert the
ps file into a native tgif *.obj file. I can now open up
the file in tgif and on the screen it looks great. I can
even annotate the text and create boxes, etc. When it comes
time to print, however, the printer output is not what is
on the screen. I may have a box on the screen properly
drawn around certain text on the screen, but the printer
output has the box in a different, slightly offset position.
This is a serious flaw...you cannot trust the screen image
to match what the printer produces. In addition, though the
text looks to be nicely placed on the page on the screen,
the position of the text on the printer output has little
bearing to the image. Instead of being centered, the text
is packed up nice and tight to the top of the paper with
some text cutoff as a result.
Basically, I can't find any graphics tools for linux that
can handle really simple graphics work.
IS THERE ANY graphics app available for linux that can
actually import ascii text (not just ps, not eps, not latex,
etc) and have the graphics and placement on the screen
actually match reality when you print?
This is a serious problem for me in being able to use
linux. I am close to the point of having to do serious
writing and publishing work on windows as a result of
this.
Please tell me there is another way.
patrick
--
To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe"
as the Subject.
