Peer Review

TeXCAD

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Reviewed:: Jan 4, 2003 by Mathematics

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: TeXCAD is a drawing program that provides a visual way to produce pictures in LaTeX picture environments. It virtually eliminates the need to remember the way LaTeX encodes pictures as most types of pictures can be generated quickly with TeXCAD. TeXCAD is freely available for download. Source code (in TurboPascal!) is included.
Type of Material:: Reference material.
Recommended Uses:: Computer aided drawing of simple figures.
Technical Requirements:: WINDOWS or DOS PC
Identify Major Learning Goals:: Drawing pictures using LaTeX picture environments.
Target Student Population:: Anyone using LaTeX who wants to include figures in a presentation.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: LaTeX.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

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Grid-based drawing program with a default grid
in millimeters and default steps of 1/3 of a millimeter. Grid and window can
be adjusted.

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Supports all functions that are available
through the LaTeX picture environment.

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Except for text and vectors, class=SpellE>TeXCAD shows a picture that is what LaTeX
will produce.

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Graphical editing features such as mirror copy
and rotated copies.

Concerns:

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Display of the actual text in text boxes
(instead of capital ?T? and ?BT?) and of the actual tips of vectors (instead
of circles) would be nice.

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A feature that allows the user to connect objects
so that when one is dragged the others adjust would be nice. This may strongly
clash with the limited number of slopes of lines that LaTeX
allows though, so it is understandably not available.

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For fine tuning, it would be nice if one could
click on an object and edit the actual source code line. It needs to be said
though that the reviewer who would like this feature was designing very
specific, small pictures.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

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Generation of LaTeX
picture environments, which are sufficient for many mathematical graphics and
very compact.

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Several functions (lines with any slope, class=SpellE>bezier vectors) are geared towards eradicating some of
the LaTeX picture environment?s limitations.

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If the TeXCAD
preview is not enough, then with a simple shell program that imports class=SpellE>TeXCADs output and switching between TeXCAD
and the preview of the shell program one can establish an effective
edit-view-edit cycle.

Concerns:

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With many lines at non-standard slopes, the
memory of some LaTeX implementations may be
exceeded. Newer LaTeX implementations do not run
into this problem any more.

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The tips of bezier
vectors sometimes do not point in the direction they should. Going into the
code for the picture environment can fix this problem easily, though.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

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Simple, matter-of-fact documentation included
in English and German (dvi
format).

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Once it is started the interface is highly
intuitive. Mouse movements plus the left button (select) and the right button
(escape/cancel) are all that is needed to run the whole application. For
fine-tuning of cursor positions or if a mouse is not present, the cursor keys
can be used to steer motion, Enter (select) and Esc (escape/cancel) can be
used instead of the mouse buttons.

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TeXCAD is an
executable that can be started through Windows Explorer, My Computer or on
the command line. Shortcuts can be created.

Concerns:

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There are two different versions, stored in ? class=SpellE>texcad.zip? and ?texcad32.zip?. Texcad.zip
contains the original implementation which runs (at least) under WINDOWS 95,
98 and 2000. Texcad32.zip is a later implementation, which ran only on
WIN95/98 and only on laptops. This is unfortunate, as Texcad32 is the more
developed program.

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Sometimes when starting from a shortcut, class=SpellE>TeXCAD may not find a file (?egavga.bgi?)
and the user needs to supply the path. Egavga.bgi
is best put in the same directory as TeXCAD.
Novices will need to learn how to create a shortcut.

Other Issues and Comments:: TeXCAD is a program back from the days when DOS was the operating system on PCs. Given this early creation and no further development, we can safely conclude that TeXCAD was firmly ahead of its time. As this review shows it is still competitive today. The limitations of TeXCAD are mostly the limitations of the LaTeX picture environment, so they cannot be held against this program. The main problem the reviewers had was that TeXCAD32 does not run under modern versions of WINDOWS. The earlier version of TeXCAD is sufficient for most tasks, though.
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