INTRODUCTION: PicTeX is an object-based drawing program that reads and writes in the LaTeX picture format. If you do a lot of drawing and/or editing of LaTeX pictures, this ought to save you some time. In its current state it is free, though I'd love to get a postcard or something if you find PicTeX useful. Also feel free to send any comments or bug reports to me at the address at the end of this document. I've spent a fair amount of time wringing the bugs out of this thing, but I'm sure there will be some that slipped by. As always, use this software at your own risk. FEATURES: Since PicTeX was designed from the ground up as a LaTeX picture edi- tor, I was able to incorporate a number of special features to make con- structing LaTeX pictures easier. These include: * Automatic restrictions on the slopes of lines and vectors * User-definable limits on the diameters of circles and discs * Simple means of creating \framebox, , and objects containing positioned text * Easy creation of "multiput" objects * Supports "groups" and reads/writes them as subpictures * Optional "quantization" of ""es so that the width and height are always multiples of the dashlength. * Understands " " in any units except "em"s or "ex"s * Quick switch between and * Automatic calculation of bounding boxes, and an option to "pad" the bounding box by any number of points. These are in addition to the usual "Draw Program" sorts of features, such as Cut/Copy/Paste, Group/Ungroup, Send to Back/Front, and selection of multiple objects. HOW DO I MAKE IT WORK? Anyone who is familiar with drawing programs on the Macintosh should have no problem getting the hang of PicTeX. The palette on the left-hand side of the screen allows you to select tools that create the various LaTeX picture objects. The last three buttons have slightly different functions: The first of the three creates "multiput"s. Select one ob- ject (possibly a group or another multiput) and click the button with the vertical lines on it and you will be presented with a dialog box that al- lows you to specify the X and Y offsets and the number of objects to draw. The last two items allow you to switch between the and mode. There are two ways to get text into your picture, corresponding to the two methods for drawing text in LaTeX. The simplest method is to choose the "text" tool from the palette and click where you want the text to go. This will make a piece of text whose origin is at the lower left corner. The second method is to make a box with text in it. The box can be solid, dashed, or invisible. When you frame a piece of text, you can specify where the text goes in relation to the sides of the box. (Invisible boxes can be useful for justifying text.) To draw boxed text in PicTeX, choose the "framed text" tool from the palette and draw the box in which you want the text. A dialog box will then appear that lets you describe the box's attributes and enter the text. Since PicTeX is so similar to other drawing programs for the Mac, I won't spend any time describing the largely "standard" features. What can I say? Take it for a test-drive. Play around with it. Get a feel for what it can and cannot do. LIMITATIONS: PicTeX supports a fairly complete set of LaTeX picture commands, but I had to forget about anything that required typesetting capabilities. This means that I wasn't able to implement "" or "" com- mands. It also means that text had to be limited to a fixed-width font. The Courier typeface is used on the screen, and is translated into the face in LaTeX. Since the face will be different sizes in differ- ent LaTeX styles, PicTeX lets you specify what point size to use on the screen. From experience, 10pt Courier is almost exactly the same width as 11pt and 11pt Courier is about 2