[Tex/LaTex] List of TikZ Editor

big-listtikz-pgf

After mentioning TikZ in academia, I tried to have a look here for recommended editors for TikZ. I found no list, and thus here's the question:

What TikZ editors/front-ends do you know? What can you recommend?

I guess that what I have in mind is a tool where the image can be edited using an interface similar to inkscape, and then it will generate a code snippet in TikZ. For example I know of geogebra, but I'm interested in a big list.

I am aware of the list available here, as pointed by one of the answers to this question, but I'm interested in some evaluation of each based on personal experience.

I suggest that each tool should has its own answer, this way this will become sort of a poll as well. Probably, each answer should contain at least: pros/cons/platform…

Best Answer

TikzEdt

This is a wonderful editor for TikZ graphics. It has a live preview, several code snippets and examples and parses the TikZ elements to some degree so that for example nodes can be marked in the live preview. Additionally this parsing allows the direct manipulation of some elements, you can drag nodes around in the preview window and the code is updated accordingly.

While the current version 0.2.1 is still a bit rough here and there it works nicely on Windows with a preliminary Linux version.

http://www.tikzedt.org/

Tikzedt

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[Tex/LaTex] How to fix jumping TikZ pictures in beamer

I finally (!) got round to implementing this. Here's my code:

\documentclass{beamer}
% \url{http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/18704/86}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcounter{jumping}
\resetcounteronoverlays{jumping}

\makeatletter
\tikzset{
  stop jumping/.style={
    execute at end picture={%
      \stepcounter{jumping}%
      \immediate\write\pgfutil@auxout{%
        \noexpand\jump@setbb{\the\value{jumping}}{\noexpand\pgfpoint{\the\pgf@picminx}{\the\pgf@picminy}}{\noexpand\pgfpoint{\the\pgf@picmaxx}{\the\pgf@picmaxy}}
      },
      \csname jump@\the\value{jumping}@maxbb\endcsname
      \path (\the\pgf@x,\the\pgf@y);
      \csname jump@\the\value{jumping}@minbb\endcsname
      \path (\the\pgf@x,\the\pgf@y);
    },
  }
}
\def\jump@setbb#1#2#3{%
  \@ifundefined{jump@#1@maxbb}{%
    \expandafter\gdef\csname jump@#1@maxbb\endcsname{#3}%
  }{%
    \csname jump@#1@maxbb\endcsname
    \pgf@xa=\pgf@x
    \pgf@ya=\pgf@y
    #3
    \pgfmathsetlength\pgf@x{max(\pgf@x,\pgf@xa)}%
    \pgfmathsetlength\pgf@y{max(\pgf@y,\pgf@ya)}%
    \expandafter\xdef\csname jump@#1@maxbb\endcsname{\noexpand\pgfpoint{\the\pgf@x}{\the\pgf@y}}%
  }
  \@ifundefined{jump@#1@minbb}{%
    \expandafter\gdef\csname jump@#1@minbb\endcsname{#2}%
  }{%
    \csname jump@#1@minbb\endcsname
    \pgf@xa=\pgf@x
    \pgf@ya=\pgf@y
    #2
    \pgfmathsetlength\pgf@x{min(\pgf@x,\pgf@xa)}%
    \pgfmathsetlength\pgf@y{min(\pgf@y,\pgf@ya)}%
    \expandafter\xdef\csname jump@#1@minbb\endcsname{\noexpand\pgfpoint{\the\pgf@x}{\the\pgf@y}}%
  }
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{tikzpicture}[stop jumping]
\foreach \k in {1,...,7}
{
   \fill<\k>[orange] (0,0) circle[radius=.5];
   \fill<\k>[blue] (\k * 45:\k) circle[radius=.2] coordinate (a);
}
\draw (0,0) -- (a);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Here's how it works. We have a global counter, jumping, which is stable under overlays. That is, beamer implements overlays by reprocessing the code several times. Normally, each time through would lead to a counter being incremented, but so long as beamer is told, it can take that into account and resets the counter for each run through. The upshot of this is that this counter can be used to label (in the non-TeXnical sense) tikzpictures in such a way that the different copies of the picture on different slides get the same label.

We use that label to save the bounding box of each version of the picture to the aux file. We do this at the end of the picture to ensure that we get the right bounding box. When the aux file is read in next time, it computes the maximum and minimum extends of the various bounding boxes for this picture and saves these as PGF points. Back in the picture, we use these computed points to adjust our bounding box to the maximum extent.

Some further remarks:

We save the bounding box of each picture before comparing it with the saved maximum. This means that the maximum is always computed on the actual sizes of the pictures and doesn't take into account any previous maximum. This means that it is sensitive to changes in the picture, which is how it should be.
The bounding box is adjusted by placing coordinates in the picture. This is to ensure that the picture doesn't jump around inside its box. Simply resetting the bounding box lengths would ensure that the picture took up the same amount of space on each slide, but not that the picture stayed in the same place in that box.

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