tikz-helper

Tikz is a LaTeX package for making figures that look great in LaTeX documents. This package uses common lisp to generate tikz code for simple 2D data representations like sets of data points, histograms and functions. It is also possible to visualize 3D scalar fields.

Also included is an implementation of the Levenberg-Martquart algorithm for fitting functions to data, and cubic spline interpolation for drawing smooth lines between data points.

The file tikz-helper-example.lisp contains code that generates several plots, as well as a document with some explanatory text. Make sure the parameter *plotting-dir* is set to something appropriate. The exaple plots can be seen in ./example/example.pdf.

The generate latex files can be compiled independently or included in another tex file, thanks to the latex package standalone. If the files are included in another tex file, the master file must contain \usepackage{standalone} as well as all the packages listed in the preamble of the generated tikz tex files.

The files can also be compiled to HTML/SVG through tex4ht, like 'htlatex spline.tex'. The text is often not displayed correctly in the produced SVG files. The program pdf2svg seems to produce more consistent results for text, but curved lines are not as smooth.

Relies on the package lla (available through quicklisp).