Index of /archives/text/CTAN/macros/latex2e/contrib/chemarrow
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Liesmich.txt 2007-09-09 07:00 5.7K
README 2007-09-09 07:00 5.5K
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arrow.mf 2007-09-09 07:00 2.6K
arrow.tfm 2007-09-09 07:00 152
chemarrow.sty 2007-09-09 07:00 7.9K
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type1/ 2010-02-22 02:53 -
New arrow heads for chemical reaction schemes 4 February 2001
---------------------------------------------
1) What's the name of the game?
LaTeX can be used to typeset many kinds of different documents, but
typesetting chemical reactions is esthetically not very pleasing because
LaTeX's own arrows \rightarrow, \leftarrow and \rightleftharpoons which
you might use for this purpose are too short and the arrow heads are not
like the "standard" ones you will find in books or journals on chemistry.
The macro chemarrow.sty in conjunction with the font arrow.mf is supposed
to make the typesetting of chemical reaction schemes in LaTeX easier and
especially nicer looking.
2) Dateien
arrow.mf MetaFont source code of the arrow font
arrow.tfm .tfm Datei of arrow for the use with TeX
chemarrow.sty macro for the typesetting of arrows in chemical reaction schemes
Readme.txt English Readme
testchem.tex test file for chemarrow.sty and arrow.mf
Liesmich.txt German Readme
Type 1/arrow Mac.sit.hqx type 1 version of arrow for Macintosh
Type 1/arrow PC.zip type 1 version of arrow for PC/Unix
Type 1/arrow.mp MetaPost source code of arrow
There is no need to copy the FontLab file arrow.vfb included in both of the
type 1 archives, I just put it there in case you want to enhance my designs :-)
3) Usage
The examples in the file testchem.tex should be sufficient for the
understanding of how chemarrow.sty works, and there's also a short
description in chemarrow.sty of all the newly defined commands. To use the
package, arrow.tfm must be copied to a directory where LaTeX will be
searching for .tfm files, arrow.mf must be copied to a directory where
MetaFont will be searching for MetaFont sources. The required .pk files
should be produced automatically by a dvi previewer or a printer driver.
There are also type 1 fonts of arrow.mf in Mac and PC/Unix format so that
you can produce PDF documents easily. To use the type 1 font it must be
copied to a directory where TeX and friends will be searching for type 1
fonts, the best place would of course be where the Computer Modern type 1
fonts reside.
If dvips is supposed to use the type 1 font instead of the .pk font you
must add this line to psfonts.map:
- for Macintosh:
arrow arrow <arrow
- for PC/Unix:
arrow arrow <arrow.pfb
If you use pdfTeX instead of dvips and Acrobat Distiller you must also add
this line to pdftex.map:
arrow <arrow.pfb
4) Disclaimer
The macro chemarrow.sty and the font arrow.mf are quick hacks for my own
needs, I cannot guarantee that they will work an other systems than my own.
In exchange I am publishing this package as free software which means you
can do whatever you like with it and it comes for free. I would just like
to ask that in case you do make changes und publish the package or any parts of
it to add your own name or replace it with mine. Thank you.
Any hints and suggestions will be accepted gratefully.
5) History
As I was looking for new arrows I found a quite new font named cryst.mf by
Ulrich Mueller which I rather liked. After a few modifications the new font
arrow.mf was born.
I received a macro by Andreas Hertwig with which you can typeset arrows
that will change in size. I modified this macro to my needs and replaced the
original arrows with the arrows from arrow.mf. The original macro was apparently
posted in a TeX mailing list, but its author is unfortunately unknown. So, if
you are the original author and read this I'd like to thank you for your work!
The most time consuming and complicated part was to produce a type 1 font
from my MetaFont sources. Unfortunately there is no free software to do
this :-(
Also, if you include .pk fonts into PDF documents you won' get nice results
because Acrobat Reader renders them very poorly. Therefore it is vital to
include type 1 fonts into a PDF document :-(
Using arrow.mp which is a slightly modified arrow.mf in combination with
MetaPost and mfplain I was able to produce graphics in the EPS format which I
imported into a demo of FontLab 3.0. After a few steps and reducing the
size to 79% I was able to save the font in type 1 format.
6) Problems
Unfortunately I am no expert on creating fonts. This is probably why the
arrows will show on some platforms only at 125% or larger. Below 125% there
will only be some strokes :-(
I think if someone did a manual hinting of the font then this problem
would be remedied, but this will probably not be me because this is out of
my league and beyond the time limit of the demo of FontLab :-)
So if there is somebody out there who is able to help me with this problem
I'd be grateful.
7) Future versions
To tell you the truth, I don't really know if there will be future versions
because as far as I'm concerned the package works as it is supposed to.
The direct linking of the arrow font in chemarrow.sty is maybe not so nice,
so this might be something I will change in the future. The rendering
problem of PDF documents on some platforms is also not very nice so if
some sort of solution pops up I will publish it.
8) Thank-Yous
- D. E. Knuth for TeX
- L. Lamport for LaTeX
- to the LaTeX3 team for LaTeX2e
- A. Hertwig for being so nice to give me the original macro
- to the unknown author of the original macro
- U. Mueller for cryst.mf
9) Author
Thomas Schroeder
schroeder@ictw.chemie.uni-karlsruhe.de
PS: Sorry for any misspellings and such, English is not my native
language :-)