[Kde-science] Fwd: Programs produce high-quality vector figures

[Nicolas Brisset]

Hi Martin, 

below is the mail I sent you earlier, but somehow it could not be delivered... I'm trying sending it to the list this time.
I fear there is some ambiguity as to what you're looking for. If you want to draw shapes, then I agree with previous answers that you should use karbon or inkscape. However, since you mention Rkward I suppose you're trying to plot curves from data.
Maybe you should try to define your requirements more precisely?

Nicolas

----- Mail transféré -----
De: "Nicolas Brisset" <nicolas.brisset at free.fr>
À: "martin ruessler" <martin.ruessler at gmx.net>
Envoyé: Dimanche 23 Janvier 2011 12h39:29 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
Objet: Re: [Kde-science]  Programs produce high-quality vector figures

> Hello KDE science,
Hello Martin,

> when I write protocols and present data I use LaTeX (and therefore
> KiLe). Since you have a vector file format 
> and vector fonts it seems logical to produce vector figures, also. In
> the past Rkward was the program of 
> choice but for a single figure the effort seems a bit high expecially
> when it comes to fine tuning, additional 
> text and such. Do you know of any alternative (KDE/Qt) programs which
> produces high quality vector images 
> and is easy/fast to use?
If you're looking for a quick and easy way to produce publication-quality 2D plots from data, I'd suggest trying kst. You can find more information on it under kst-plot.kde.org. 

It seems you're using Linux, unfortunately the latest versions are not yet available on most distros. You'd have to compile it from the sources, which is not very complicated, there are detailed instructions for that in the package. You can also contact us (kst at kde.org) to get support.
I really recommend using 2.0.2. We're preparing a pretty solid 2.0.3 release, but it'll take a couple more days. If you want to get started quickly, 2.0.2 is certainly already good enough.

When you have done your plot, you can save it as bitmap from the File->Export menu, but that is not what you want for vector graphics. Instead you should use File -> Print and print to PS or PDF. From PS you can generate EPS easily, which I'm pretty sure LaTex can use. Another option may be to generate SVG from kst directly, which is on the plan and normally very easy to implement as Qt provides direct SVG generation. But it's not available yet...

I hope that helps,

Nicolas