Included here is a fairly simple way to include latex into tgif
documents.  All that is needed is two of the files in this directory,
equation.sym and latex2epsi.pl.

latex2epsi.pl is a perl script which takes a latex string as input, inserts
it into the file built into the script, and then converts it the equation to
epsi by running latex, dvips, gs, and pbm2epsi.  The older technique used
pstoepsi.  I basically took the idea from there, and built it into
latex2epsi.pl.

equation.sym is a TGIF symbol file.

Requirements:

  latex2epsi requires perl, gs, pbm2epsi, latex, and dvips to operate. 
  (Perl is a great scripting laguage, but it should be easy to write 
  latex2epsi.pl in any other scripting laguage - if need be.)

  TGIF 2.15, patch level 5 - this improves the alignment of the EPS file and
  the representation part of the symbol.
  
Configuration:

  Create a directory <domaindir> and copy equation.sym into it.

  Edit latex2epsi.pl

    o change the first line to point to the perl executable on your machine.  

    o You may also want to change the default font size, or add more useful 
      macros to the latex file imbedded in latex2epsi.pl.  To see how 
      \centertext, \lefttext, and \righttext are used, see example.obj.

  Copy latex2epsi.pl into a directory in you executable path.  Run rehash.

  Set the following Xdefaults:

     Tgif*DefaultEPSScaling:         1.778
     Tgif*ShortCuts: !<Key>T:ToggleNamedAttrShown(eq=)
     Tgif*UpdateChildUsingAlignment: true
     Tgif*DefaultDomain:     0
     Tgif*Domain0:           LATEX

  and the environment variable LATEX (matches the Xdefault string above)

     setenv LATEX <domaindir>

That's all.  Test latex2epsi.pl by typing something like

  latex2epsi '\[\sum_i\frac{a}{b_i}\]' junk.epsi

and printing the output

  lp junk.epsi

Ghostview may not display it because it is too small.

Given that all has went well up to now, typical usage is as follows: 

 o insert an instance of the equation.sym with <Cntl>i and selecting
   it from the list presented (if you didn't create a domain, just 
   import equation.sym)

 o edit the text input string, 

 o set the alignment options (typically these will be M(iddle) and C(enter) 
   - I can't really imagine why we would use other choises, but there will 
   be some.  If the text you create is smaller than the box I created for the
   representation part of equation.sym, you may need to make it a little 
   smaller, if you want an accurate bounding box.),

 o compile it with shift <middle button>

Its that simple.  Takes about 5 seconds of processing on a HP715/75
per latex string.  I use it for all text, equations an all.  You can toggle 
the display of the input text string using T (as was set above).

That's it.  See attached COPYRIGHT file.
    
Robert Estes - 6/1/94
estes@cipc.ucdavis.edu