macrostikz-pgf
I draw a kind of box in TikZ very often, so I decide to make a macro, even though I have never done it before…
The aim is to draw a rectangle. 4 parameters (1, 7, 4, 8 in the figure) mean its bounds, which are displayed above and on the left hand of the rectangle. text is the text inside the rectangle. And I guess another 2 parameters are needed to determine the real width and height of the rectangle.
I have no clue about writing a macro, could anyone give a framework to start?
Given the lack of answers other than the comments, here is a summary of the critiques which have come from the comments. By increasing the visibility of these comments, I'm hoping that I may get a solution to the portability problem noted so far, and provoke further critiquing of my macro generally.
Technical/æsthetic obstacle:
Brent.Longborough, with further elaboration by TH., noted that this macro is not necessarily very robust to a change in font, which may have different dimensions for e.g. its ex-size relative to the size of the actual letters. It would seem that a different choice of parameters in the \raisebox-es, and possibly the \scalefont-s as well, may be necessary for each different font used.
Technical improvement:
TH. suggested (if I understand correctly) that I should modify the macro using \m@th (or equivalent): a little research indicates that this is probably to improve the horizontal spacing of the result. Thus, a minor improvement would be
\makeatletter
\newcommand\sfrac[2]{% \dfrac{\text{\raisebox{-0.5ex}{\scalefont{0.85}{$\m@th#1$}}}}% {\text{\raisebox{0.35ex}{\scalefont{0.85}{$\m@th#2$}}}}% }
\makeatother
[EDIT: I am 'accepting' this answer for now, but if anyone comes along and provides useful insights, I will change the accepted answer.]
You can use the excellent matrixcells package that Andrew Stacey made available on launchpad:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz, matrixcells}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\matrix [
matrix of nodes,
matrix grid,
matrix border,
nodes={font=\ttfamily}
]
{
AAAA & BBB & CCCCCC\\
EE & F & GGG \\
aaaaa & b & c\\
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
Best Answer
First and foremost, Peter Grill's first sentence is probably the most important piece of advice on this page (so far). First work out what you want normally, then wrap it up in a macro.
Given that this is part of a TikZ picture, you can do this using styles. This method is quite flexible. For example, here's one way to do your box:
An advantage of this method over a more normal TeX macro is that it is very easy to pass other options to the node, such as a colour or a fill or a pattern, simply by putting them in the usual place.
The code above works as follows. The
fitlibrary is used to ensure that the node contains the specified points. As it is a rectangle, we just need to include two opposite corners. Then the rest of the code puts the labels in. We use theappend after commandto put a node at the relevant places. The only snag is that we have to save the main node in a macro rather than using\tikzlastnodethroughout (as that gets overwritten).The above produces the following picture:
(Edit: Thanks to Jake for pointing out that five
append after commands is a tad excessive.)