* Circuit_macros Version 10.5, copyright (c) 2024 J. D. Aplevich under * * the LaTeX Project Public Licence in file Licence.txt. The files of * * this distribution may be redistributed or modified provided that this * * copyright notice is included and provided that modifications are clearly * * marked to distinguish them from this distribution. There is no warranty * * whatsoever for these files. * This is a set of macros for drawing high-quality line diagrams to include in LaTeX, web, or similar documents, with support for svg (including Inkscape) and other formats. Fundamental electric circuit elements and basic logic gates based on IEEE and European standards are included with several tools and examples of other types of diagrams. Elements can be scaled or drawn in any orientation and are easy to modify. The advantages and disadvantages of such a system in its basic form are similar to those of TeX itself, which is macro-based and non-WYSIWYG. Graphical interfaces are available for specific operating systems. The macros are to be processed by an m4 macro processor, and evaluate to drawing commands in the pic "little language," which is easy to read and learn. The diagram is then automatically translated into TiKZ, PSTricks, or other formats for processing by LaTeX or other applications. Pic is well suited to line drawings requiring parametric or conditional components, fine adjustment, geometric calculations, repetition, or recursion. Arbitrary text for formatting by LaTeX can be included. Free interpreters for m4 and pic are readily available. Sources are available as a git repository at https://gitlab.com/aplevich/Circuit_macros REQUIRED SOFTWARE: Preferred setup: m4, dpic, LaTeX or PDFLaTeX, TikZ-PGF or GNU m4, dpic, LaTeX, PSTricks, dvips The GNU m4 macro processor is assumed, and a small number of macros require GNU m4 features. Other versions of m4 will work with most macros. The dpic interpreter can translate pic input into several forms, typically a .tex file for processing by latex with pgf/Tikz or PSTicks. Alternative: m4, GNU pic (gpic), TeX or LaTeX, and a driver recognizing tpic specials (eg dvips) The GNU pic interpreter with option -t produces tpic special commands. Also possible for some diagrams: m4 and dpic with output in the following formats: LaTeX graphics or LaTeX eepic (for simple diagrams), mfpic, xfig, MetaPost, svg, pdf, or Postscript. USAGE First-time users should read the Quick Start section of Circuit_macros.pdf. The following describes the most common basic usage to produce tikz or pstricks graphics for LaTeX; see below for integration with other tools and production of other formats. You probably should try out the basic usage before integrating the macros with sophisticated system-dependent tools. When developing your own diagrams, refer to the macro descriptions in the List of Macros section of Circuit_macros.pdf. Suppose that a source file, cct.m4 say, has been created and the top two lines are .PS cct_init ... The file is processed by feeding a configuration file followed by the diagram source to m4, and routing the output to dpic. If you have set the M4PATH environment variable as described in the INSTAllATION instructions, the command for Tikz processing is m4 pgf.m4 cct.m4 | dpic -g > cct.tex NOTE: The order in which the files are given to m4 is important. A configuration file (pgf.m4 in this example) must ALWAYS appear first. If you have not set the M4PATH environmental variable then the command is m4 -I pgf.m4 cct.m4 | dpic -g > cct.tex where is the absolute path to the directory containing the library macros. If the first line of cct.m4 is include(pgf.m4) and M4PATH is defined, then this command can be simplified to m4 cct.m4 | dpic -g > cct.tex In each case, the resulting file cct.tex is normally inserted into a document to be processed by LaTeX. The -g option of dpic produces Tikz-pgf graphics commands in cct.tex so the LaTeX document must have \usepackage{tikz} in the preamble. To produce postscript output, the LaTeX preamble must contain \usepackage{pstricks}, pstricks.m4 is read instead of pgf.m4, and the dpic option is -p, so the command is m4 pstricks.m4 cct.m4 | dpic -p > cct.tex or m4 cct.m4 | dpic -p > cct.tex Read Section 2 of the manual to see how to process the diagram source from within the main .tex source file. To use the GNU gpic processor (called pic on some systems) instead of dpic, the command is m4 gpic.m4 cct.m4 | gpic -t > cct.tex The basic commands given above suffice for documents of moderate size and complexity; otherwise, a "make" facility or equivalent should be used or, for modest documents, diagram processing can be controlled from within the tex document source as described in the manual. For near-immediate viewing of the basic process, three windows can be kept open: one in which to edit the source, one to process the source and produce postscript or pdf, and a viewer such as GSview 5.0, which updates when clicked. INSTALLATION AND TESTING: See the INSTALL file. SOURCES AND MANUALS: View or print Circuit_macros.pdf in the doc directory. M4 is widely available on Unix systems. PC source and executables are also available: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/m4.htm A large set of Unix-like Windows tools, including m4, is available via http://www.cygwin.com/ DJGPP versions are available as m4-NNb.zip (where NN is the current release number) on web archives and at http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/dl/ofc/dlfiles.cgi/current/v2gnu/ There are several sources of hints on m4 usage; some places to look are http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/m4.htm (m4 for Windows) http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/ (GNU m4 manual) https://mbreen.com/m4.html (m4 by example) The m4 (computer language) article in Wikipedia gives a concise overview. An academic discussion of the language can be found in http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/research/pdf/expl-m4.pdf. The GNU Autoconf manual contains a chapter on M4 programming: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/index.html (Do not read this manual first). Autoconf uses quote characters [ and ] instead of the default ` and ' which work well with the pic language. DPIC: Several Linux distributions will install dpic by command but the version may not be the latest. A git repository containing complete source is at https://gitlab.com/aplevich/dpic and source plus a Windows executable can be obtaied from http://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~aplevich/dpic/ The best advice is to obtain the newest version. The dpic distribution includes dpic-doc.pdf, a manual containing a summary of the pic language and a detailed description of features unique to dpic. GPIC: Gpic is part of the GNU groff distribution, for which the source and documentation is available from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/ but there are mirror sites as well. A more extensive manual is found in the documentation that comes with GNU pic, which is typically installed as gpic. A pdf copy is included with the dpic distribution. The original AT&T pic manual can be found at http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/v10/10thEdMan/pic.pdf SVG output, Inkscape: Dpic -v produces svg output. If the result is to be directly inserted into html, then as for Postscript output, the diagram source file has to be adapted to remove any LaTeX formatting. The configuration file svg.m4 contains macros that can assist. At the expense of an extra postprocessing step, sophisticated text formatting and font selection can be retained by first producing pdf output and then converting to svg using, say, dvisvgm (https://www.ctan.org/pkg/dvisvgm) or pdf2svg (https://github.com/dawbarton/pdf2svg). SVG is the native file format for the Inkscape graphics editor. Therefore, elements defined by these macros can be output by dpic -v in svg format for later manipulation by Inkscape. A very basic palette of circuit elements for Inkscape is found in examples/paletteSVG.m4. In the examples subdirectory, type "make paletteSVG.svg", read the resulting file into Inkscape, and then ungroup the elements as desired. You would probably wish to add to or customize these elements for extensive use. EXAMPLES A set of examples is included in this distribution, showing electric circuits, block diagrams, flow charts, signal-flow graphs, basic use of colour and fill, and other applications. Some of the examples test the boundaries of the domain of application of dpic with m4 macros. Read the manual Circuit_macros.pdf and view examples.pdf in the examples directory or make and view the html file in the examples/svg directory. For the curious, there are additional source files in the examples directory that are not shown in examples.pdf. Try http://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~aplevich/Circuit_macros/ for the possibly unstable development version of these macros. The examples directory Makefile automates the generation of .ps, .eps, .png, and .pdf files for individual diagrams. Subdirectories of the examples directory are for testing metafont, metapost, pgf, psfrag, and xfig examples. WORKFLOW: Installation and usage of the macros have evolved somewhat since the beginning, so archived instructions on the net may be slightly more complicated than currently necessary. I use a very simple workflow most of the time: three open windows; one to edit the diagram source, one to run LaTeX and produce pdf or postscript, and a document viewer window. The lines :set mps+=`:' :set mps+=<:> were added to my default .vimrc file to highlight matched pairs of brackets, braces, parentheses, and, expecially for m4 programming, single quotes. INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TOOLS: To automate document production, I simply added commands to the appropriate Makefiles. However, others have developed tools that simplify workflow for their circumstances. The following are representative but keep in mind that systems and installations evolve over time: A Python-based GUI called PyCirkuit is at https://pypi.org/project/pycirkuit/ and https://github.com/orestesmas/pycirkuit. For an introduction, look at the FOSDEM video by Orestes Mas: https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/pycirkuit/ A python build-automation tool, m4cm, by Peter Jan Randewijk is at https://m4cmpy.wordpress.com/ and very clear instructions about getting started with Circuit_macros are at https://m4cmpy.wordpress.com/2020/02/23/getting-started-with-m4-circuit-macros/ Fabrice Salvaire has a blog and a useful bash script at https://www.fabrice-salvaire.fr/en/blog/electronic-circuit-diagrams/ A set of examples and hints intended for his colleagues has been produced by Alan Robert Clark at http://ytdp.ee.wits.ac.za/cct.html A video "Drawing Circuit Diagrams with Circuits Macros" by James Green showing how to use Circuit_macros with his setup is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=53&v=pFRIBvUJHS4 A git repository of a KDE interface by Andrew G. for Linux is at https://github.com/ag-ckt/cirkuit/tree/V0.5.0. Another recent introduction is at https://www.root.cz/clanky/publikovanie-elektrickych-schem-a-diagramov-pomocou-circuit-macros/ It is in Czech but Google translate works well. LaTeX automation tools are discussed at, for example, http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/64/tools-for-automating-document-compilation A Windows batch file for Circuit_macros is found at http://someonehasdonethis.blogspot.ca/2012/12/a-solution-for-drawing-circuit-diagrams.html Mac users: Descriptions of Mac installations have been published from time to time; for example: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/34946319/using-circuitmacros-in-mac-os-x-automation-and-robotics- VARIATIONS Macros such as these will be modified inevitably to suit individual needs and taste. They continue to evolve in my own library as I use them and as others send comments. No such collection can hope to include all possible circuit-related symbols, so you will probably find yourself writing your own macros or adapting some of these. Be careful to rename modified macros to avoid confusion. The learning curve compares well to other packages, but there is no trivially easy way to produce high-quality graphics. (If "a picture is worth a thousand words," ask yourself how long it would take to write, revise, and perfect a thousand words.) See eschpic on Github for IEC-style electrical drawings. The pic language dates from the 1980s and was first developed as a preprocessor for the *roff family of Unix wordprocessors. Some additional libraries such as chem (for chemical structures) and dformat (for data structures) are still viable. A collection of traditional pic resources and related material is available at http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/troff.html In particular, W. Richard Stevens illustrated his books on Unix and TCP/IP using pic macros. Some of the sources found there need minor tuning to work under dpic. MetaPost examples: Go to the examples/mpost directory. Check the Makefile as described in the README file, type "make", and stand well back. Postscript with embedded psfrag strings: Type "make" in the examples/psfrag directory to process examples using dpic -f for creating .eps files with embedded psfrag strings. Postscript, CorelDraw, Adobe Illustrator: Circuits and other diagrams not requiring LaTeX-formatted text can be processed through m4 and dpic -r to produce encapsulated Postscript output. This output can also be imported into CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator. However, Postscript is not a word processor, so any LaTeX formatting instructions in the source are not obeyed. These programs also import svg output produced by dpic -v. Metafont: The file examples/mf/cct.mf is a Metafont source for a few variants of the basic elements, produced using the mfpic output of dpic. It may be of interest to persons who cannot otherwise implement the macros. To see the elements (assuming a typical installation), type "make" in the mf directory. Xfig: The file examples/xfig/xfiglib.fig contains circuit elements in xfig 3.2 format produced by dpic. The file is a prototype because many more elements could be included. Logic gates often have many labels, and xfig is not a word processor, so some fine tuning of labels is in order. Translation between languages always involves a loss of information and idiom, but Xfig can store diagrams in pic format, so it is possible to alternate between xfig and dpic. LIBRARIES: The file libgen.m4 contains general-purpose macros and is read automatically by other libraries. The file libcct.m4 defines basic circuit elements. Binary logic-circuit elements are in liblog.m4 and additional single-line elements are in libSLD.m4. Macros for drawing 3D projections are in lib3D.m4, and some macros for drawing double-line arrows are in darrow.m4. The file dpictools.pic contains pic macros and is read automatically by some of the examples. Feel free to contact me with comments or questions. I have retired from full-time work but continue the hobby of maintaining these files. I may now be able to spend more time on individual requests but I may not reply instantly to email. Dwight Aplevich aplevich (AT) uwaterloo (DOT) ca