[Tex/LaTex] Unsung Heros – PSTricks, TikZ, pgfplots,

best practicespgfplotspstrickstikz-pgf

While watching presentations (mostly made with beamer) at my university I noticed, most people here use LaTeX to create there presentations which is really nice. (not just for the health of my eyes)

Getting more familiar with PSTricks,TikZ, pgfplots and other packages creating graphics I often notice, people try to create beautiful presentations but struggle inserting pictures, plots or schemes.

I tend to tell them that there is an easy way to create graphics and display them within their documents. Mostly they are totally stunned after seeing some examples. After showing some code, most of them refuse to go this way and continue to do workarounds and other hacky stuff to include there pictures.

This leads me to two questions in once.

Why are tools like TikZ and pgfplots still this unknown even though most of the questions here turn out to be related to them?
Any ideas on how to convince them to really try them out.

Best Answer

Whet their appetite: show example galleries (TikZ, PSTricks, pgfplots) to see how capable the packages are. People may understand that they can use it for much more than just one picture, so worth the effort of learning.
Show an easy workflow to easily create a stunning diagram.
- Draw a grid of help lines (just a small \foreach \draw thing)
- Place some nodes there, you can easily see the coordinates using the grid
- Connect the nodes by arrows
- Define one or more fancy node styles and apply
Straightforward, quick, understandable, nice result.
Show that TikZ pictures are overlay aware, they can evolve while clicking through slides.
Show that you can integrate TikZ with classic text and maths: between equations and terms, you can create arbitrary arrows using \tikzmark.

User Guides

The TikZ/pgf manual (texdoc pgfmanual) or on CTAN. Comprehensive, filled with good advice on making graphics, but rather long. The first sections are written as a tutorial and the rest of it as a reference.
"TikZ pour l'impatient" is 189 pages and in French.
"A very minimal introduction to Tikz" (24 pages, including examples), aimed at economists and tries to present the smallest possible number of techniques one would need to be functional.
For algebraists, “Commutative Diagrams using TikZ” by Felix Lenders is a useful introduction to the parts of TikZ most used in modern algebra texts.
Chapter 5 of van Dongens "LaTeX and Friends" (direct link to PDF) is a ~40 page introduction to TikZ.
"L'Arte di disegnare con LaTeX" is 55 pages and in Italian.
VisualTikZ consists in more than 150 pages full of examples for TikZ commands and options. Every command or option has an accompanying figure (here some examples are shown).

Example Sites

TeXample: examples of TikZ/pgf pictures demonstrating most (if not all!) of the features of TikZ/pgf.
This very site: not so organized, but by definition anything it says is the answer to a question that people have actually had while using TikZ. The answers are quite thoughtful and often nuanced. Usually they provide working code samples.

(Community Wiki: add other resources to the lists in this answer; if you haven't enough reputation to do that, add as a comment or an answer and I'll merge them in.)

[Tex/LaTex] Alignment of several pgfplots of different widths inside subfigures

The problem is caused for the axis descriptions, so one possibility would be to trim the axis using the trim axis right, trim axis left options for tikzpicture; simply begin each of the environments in picture1.tikz, picture2.tikz,...,picture6.tikz with:

\begin{tikzpicture}[trim axis right,trim axis left]

Also, due to the values for the y axis for the fifth image, its height will be slightly smaller than for the other images, so I think your subfigures will look better if the subcaption labels go below the subfigures. I added some vertical spacing between each row using the optional argument for \\, as in \\[<length>].

I am afraid that again the width and height were set by trial and error; however, notice that setting the width for both the plots and the subfigure environments using the same length (\figurewidth), the appropriate widths can be quiclky updated if required. These fine tuning adjustments are thus better left for the final versions of the document.

The resulting code:

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt, BCOR=12mm, DIV=8,twoside]{scrreprt}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}                          
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 

\addtokomafont{caption}{\small}
\usepackage{libertine}
\usepackage{microtype}
\KOMAoptions{DIV=last}

\usepackage{subcaption}  

\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=newest}
\pgfplotsset{plot coordinates/math parser=false}
\newlength\figureheight
\newlength\figurewidth
   \setlength\figureheight{4.5cm}
   \setlength\figurewidth{.4\linewidth}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[p]
\captionsetup[subfigure]{skip=-2pt}
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{\figurewidth}
   \input{picture1.tikz}
   \caption{}
\end{subfigure}\hfill
\begin{subfigure}[b]{\figurewidth}
   \input{picture2.tikz}
   \caption{}
   \label{sfig:window1}
\end{subfigure}\\[1em]
\begin{subfigure}[b]{\figurewidth}
   \input{picture3.tikz}
   \caption{}
\end{subfigure}\hfill
\begin{subfigure}[b]{\figurewidth}
   \input{picture4.tikz}
   \caption{}
\end{subfigure}\\[1em]
\begin{subfigure}[b]{\figurewidth}
   \input{picture5.tikz}
   \caption{}
\end{subfigure}\hfill
\begin{subfigure}[b]{\figurewidth}
   \input{picture6.tikz}
   \caption{}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{This is just a caption long enough to cause a linebreak and it is clear how wide it is.}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

An image of the result:

enter image description here

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] the minimum one needs to know to use TikZ

User Guides

Example Sites

[Tex/LaTex] Alignment of several pgfplots of different widths inside subfigures

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