Until

Until is a graphics editor written by Glen Gribble, incorporating code from an earlier graphics editor written by John Wawryznek and Telle Witney. The primary purpose of the tool is to generate publication-quality graphics: all of the figures in Carver Mead's book Analog VLSI and Neural Systems were drawn in Until, and imported into LaTex. Features of Until include:

Many drawing modes

Bezier curves, circles, ellipses, polygons, arrows, and several types of boxes can all be drawn with Until. Control points for Bezier curves can be viewed and directly altered. Mixed hierarchy is supported: instances of figures and primitive elements can be mixed on a page. Instances can be rotated, scaled, and flattened as needed. Text is supported with many fonts.

Input compatibility

Until accepts graphical output from the Chipmunk tools Log and View , so that output from these tools can be annotated before inclusion into documents.

Output compatibility

Until can generate two types of Postscript. One output type is standard encapsulated Postscript, including all text labels; this type of Postscript is compatible with the psfig macros included with dvips . A second output type splits the figure into two files: a Postscript file for graphics, and a TeX file for labels, including placement information in TeX. An included macro package, psmac, overlays these two files in a TeX document, allowing the fonts in a figure to match the fonts in the main text.

Edit-extend mode

Edit-extend mode is another special feature of Until; it lets the user change parameters for graphics objects using text input. In this way, graphical and textual manipulation can be combined as convenient during figure creation.

For users with simple illustration requirements, Until can be a cost-free alternative to commercial tools like Framemaker, when used in conjunction with TeX. Compatibility with Analog and View formats, and the special functionality of the psmac TeX macros, are two other reasons users choose Until.

To learn more about Until, you can start exploring its documentation .

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