I am curious what sort of applications people use to make very nice diagrams that often appear in papers and books. I attached an example of the sort of diagram that I am interested in making, particularly the curved coordinate systems (I am typing up some notes on Differential Geometry). Metapost seems useful, but the only real way I can see to create the curved coordinate system is to manually draw in each line via coordinates… which seems unpleasant to say the least.
Thanks for your help!
Best Answer
Inkscape does wonders. Nowadays, you can even export directly to tikz code.
You should keep in mind that publication quality diagrams are made by publication quality illustrators, who are paid for by publication quality editorial houses...