PIC(1)

NAME
pic - compile pictures for troff or TeX

SYNOPSIS
pic [ -nvC ] [ filename ... ]
pic -t [ -cvzC ] [ filename ... ]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page describes the GNU version of pic, which is part of the groff document formatting system. pic compiles descriptions of pictures embedded within troff or TeX input files into commands that are understood by TeX or troff. Each picture starts with a line beginning with .PS and ends with a line beginning with .PE. Anything outside of .PS and .PE is passed through without change.

It is the user's responsibility to provide appropriate definitions of the PS and PE macros. When the macro package being used does not supply such definitions (for example, old versions of -ms), appropriate definitions can be obtained with -mpic: these will center each picture.

OPTIONS

Options that do not take arguments may be grouped behind a single -. The special option -- can be used to mark the end of the options. A filename of - refers to the standard input.

-C  Recognize .PS and .PE even when followed by a character other than space or newline.

-S  Safer mode; do not execute sh commands. This can be useful when operating on untrustworthy input.

-n  Don't use the groff extensions to the troff drawing commands. You should use this if you are using a postprocessor that doesn't support these extensions. The extensions are described in groff_out(5). The -n option also causes pic not to use zero-length lines to draw dots in troff mode.

-t  TeX mode.

-c  Be more compatible with tpic. Implies -t. Lines beginning with \ are not passed through transparently. Lines beginning with . are passed through with the initial . changed to \. A line beginning with .ps is given special treatment: it takes an optional integer argument specifying the line thickness (pen size) in milliinches; a missing argument restores the previous line thickness; the default line thickness is 8 milliinches. The line thickness thus specified takes effect only when a non-negative line thickness has not been specified by use of the thickness attribute or by setting the linethick variable.

-v  Print the version number.

-z  In TeX mode draw dots using zero-length lines.

The following options supported by other versions of pic are ignored:

-D  Draw all lines using the \D escape sequence. pic always does this.

-T dev
    Generate output for the troff device dev. This is unnecessary because the troff output generated by pic is device-independent.

USAGE
This section describes only the differences between GNU pic and the original version of pic. Many of these differences also apply to newer versions of Unix pic.

  TeX mode

TeX mode is enabled by the -t option. In TeX mode, pic will define a vbox called \graph for each picture. You must yourself print that vbox using, for example, the command

    \centerline{\box\graph}

Actually, since the vbox has a height of zero this will produce slightly more vertical space above the picture than below it;

    \centerline{\raise 1em\box\graph}

would avoid this.

You must use a TeX driver that supports the tpic specials, version 2.

Lines beginning with \ are passed through transparently; a % is added to the end of the line to avoid unwanted spaces. You can safely use this feature to change fonts or to change the value of \baselineskip. Anything else may well produce undesirable results; use at your own risk. Lines beginning with a period are not given any special treatment.

  Commands

for variable = expr1 to expr2 [by [*]expr3] do X body X
    Set variable to expr1. While the value of variable is less than or equal to expr2, do body and increment variable by expr3; if by is not given, increment variable by 1. If expr3 is prefixed by * then variable will instead be multiplied by expr3. X can be any character not occurring in body.

if expr then X if-true X [else Y if-false Y]
    Evaluate expr; if it is non-zero then do if-true, otherwise do if-false. X can be any character not occurring in if-true. Y can be any character not occurring in if-false.

print arg...
    Concatenate the arguments and print as a line on stderr. Each arg must be an expression, a position, or text. This is useful for debugging.

command arg...
    Concatenate the arguments and pass them through as a line to troff orTeX. Each arg must be an expression, a position, or text. This has a similar effect to a line beginning with . or \, but allows the values of variables to be passed through.

sh X command X
    Pass command to a shell. X can be any character not occurring in command.

copy "filename"
    Include filename at this point in the file.

copy ["filename"] thru X body X [until "word"]

copy ["filename"] thru macro [until "word"]
    This construct does body once for each line of filename; the line is split into blank-delimited words, and occurrences of $i in body, for i between 1 and 9, are replaced by the i-th word of the line. If filename is not given, lines are taken from the current input up to .PE. If an until clause is specified, lines will be read only until a line the first word of which is word; that line will then be discarded. X can be any character not occurring in body. For example,

        .PS
        copy thru % circle at ($1,$2) % until "END"
        1 2
        3 4
        5 6
        END
        box
        .PE

    is equivalent to

        .PS
        circle at (1,2)
        circle at (3,4)
        circle at (5,6)
        box
        .PE

    The commands to be performed for each line can also be taken from a macro defined earlier by giving the name of the macro as the argument to thru.

reset

reset variable1, variable2 ...
    Reset pre-defined variables variable1, variable2 ... to their default values. If no arguments are given, reset all pre-defined variables to their default values. Note that assigning a value to scale also causes all pre-defined variables that control dimensions to be reset to their default values times the new value of scale.

plot expr ["text"]
    This is a text object which is constructed by using text as a format string for sprintf with an argument of expr. If text is omitted a format string of "%g" is used. Attributes can be specified in the same way as for a normal text object. Be very careful that you specify an appropriate format string; pic does only very limited checking of the string. This is deprecated in favour of sprintf.

variable:=expr
    This is similar to = except variable must already be defined, and the value of variable will be changed only in the innermost block in which it is defined. (By contrast, = defines the variable in the current block if it is not already defined there, and then changes the value in the current block.)

Arguments of the form

    X anything X

are also allowed to be of the form

    { anything }

In this case anything can contain balanced occurrences of { and }. Strings may contain X or imbalanced occurrences of { and }.

  Expressions
The syntax for expressions has been significantly extended:

x ^ y (exponentiation)
sin(x)
cos(x)
atan2(y, x)
log(x) (base 10)
exp(x) (base 10, ie 10x)
sqrt(x)
int(x)
rand() (return a random number between 0 and 1)
rand(x) (return a random number between 1 and x; deprecated)
max(e1, e2)
min(e1, e2)
!e
e1 && e2
e1 || e2
e1 == e2
e1 != e2
e1 >= e2
e1 > e2
e1 <= e2
e1 < e2
"str1" == "str2"
"str1" != "str2"

String comparison expressions must be parenthesised in some contexts to avoid ambiguity.

  Other Changes

A bare expression, expr, is acceptable as an attribute; it is equivalent to dir expr, where dir is the current direction. For example

    line 2i

means draw a line 2 inches long in the current direction.

The maximum width and height of the picture are taken from the variables maxpswid and maxpsht. Initially these have values 8.5 and 11.

Scientific notation is allowed for numbers. For example
    x = 5e-2

Text attributes can be compounded. For example,
    "foo" above ljust
is legal.

There is no limit to the depth to which blocks can be examined. For example,
    [A: [B: [C: box ]]] with .A.B.C.sw at 1,2
    circle at last [].A.B.C
is acceptable.

Arcs now have compass points determined by the circle of which the arc is a part.

Circles and arcs can be dotted or dashed. In TeX mode splines can be dotted or dashed.

Boxes can have rounded corners. The rad attribute specifies the radius of the quarter-circles at each corner. If no rad or diam attribute is given, a radius of boxrad is used. Initially, boxrad has a value of 0. A box with rounded corners can be dotted or dashed.

The .PS line can have a second argument specifying a maximum height for the picture. If the width of zero is specified the width will be ignored in computing the scaling factor for the picture. Note that GNU pic will always scale a picture by the same amount vertically as horizontally. This is different from the DWB 2.0 pic which may scale a picture by a different amount vertically than horizontally if a height is specified.

Each text object has an invisible box associated with it. The compass points of a text object are determined by this box. The implicit motion associated with the object is also determined by this box. The dimensions of this box are taken from the width and height attributes; if the width attribute is not supplied then the width will be taken to be textwid; if the height attribute is not supplied then the height will be taken to be the number of text strings associated with the object times textht. Initially textwid and textht have a value of 0.

In places where a quoted text string can be used, an expression of the form

    sprintf("format", arg,...)

can also be used; this will produce the arguments formatted according to format, which should be a string as described in printf(3) appropriate for the number of arguments supplied, using only the e, f, g or % format characters.

The thickness of the lines used to draw objects is controlled by the linethick variable. This gives the thickness of lines in points. A negative value means use the default thickness: in TeX output mode, this means use a thickness of 8 milliinches; in TeX output mode with the -c option, this means use the line thickness specified by .ps lines; in troff output mode, this means use a thickness proportional to the pointsize. A zero value means draw the thinnest possible line supported by the output device. Initially it has a value of -1. There is also a thick[ness] attribute. For example,

    circle thickness 1.5

would draw a circle using a line with a thickness of 1.5 points. The thickness of lines is not affected by the value of the scale variable, nor by the width or height given in the .PS line.

Boxes (including boxes with rounded corners), circles and ellipses can be filled by giving then an attribute of fill[ed]. This takes an optional argument of an expression with a value between 0 and 1; 0 will fill it with white, 1 with black, values in between with a proportionally gray shade. A value greater than 1 can also be used: this means fill with the shade of gray that is currently being used for text and lines. Normally this will be black, but output devices may provide a mechanism for changing this. Without an argument, then the value of the variable fillval will be used. Initially this has a value of 0.5. The invisible attribute does not affect the filling of objects. Any text associated with a filled object will be added after the object has been filled, so that the text will not be obscured by the filling.

Arrow heads will be drawn as solid triangles if the variable arrowhead is non-zero and either TeX mode is enabled or the -x option has been given. Initially arrowhead has a value of 1.

The troff output of pic is device-independent. The -T option is therefore redundant. All numbers are taken to be in inches; numbers are never interpreted to be in troff machine units.

Objects can have an aligned attribute. This will only work when the postprocessor is grops. Any text associated with an object having the aligned attribute will be rotated about the center of the object so that it is aligned in the direction from the start point to the end point of the object. Note that this attribute will have no effect for objects whose start and end points are coincident.

In places where nth is allowed `expr'th is also allowed. Note that 'th is a single token: no space is allowed between the ' and the th. For example,

    for i = 1 to 4 do {
       line from `i'th box.nw to `i+1'th box.se
    }

FILES
/usr/share/groff/tmac/tmac.pic Example definitions of the PS and PE macros.

SEE ALSO
troff(1), groff_out(5), tex(1)
Tpic: Pic for TeX
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Computing Science Technical Report No. 116, PIC — A Graphics Language for Typesetting. (This can be obtained by sending a mail message to netlib@research.att.com with a body of `send 116 from research/cstr'.)

BUGS

Input characters that are illegal for groff (ie those with ASCII code 0 or between 013 and 037 octal or between 0200 and 0237 octal) are rejected even in TeX mode.

The interpretation of fillval is incompatible with the pic in 10th edition Unix, which interprets 0 as black and 1 as white.