Labelling graphics

In the main application (so far, as used by the author) the data has been bounding-box and scaling information for importing a graphic into a TEX or L^ATEX document, followed by coordinate information for ``marked points'' within the imported graphic. This application, especially required by Wendy McKay for use with .eps files, was the the driving motivation for WARMreader¹. It is described in detail in the TUGboat article².

By processing the bounding-box information into a form usable with the \xyimport command from the X_Y-pic diagram package³, a local coordinate system is established over the region on the page containing the imported graphic. Now the marked point information is used to identify particular locations where labels, or other objects, can be placed to enhance the appearance of the graphic. WARMreader provides many user-level commands to make it easy to recover the location of the marked point, and any extra information that may have been stored in the data file, as a position or object within an X_Y-pic diagram constructed to include the imported graphic.

For this method to work, the bounding-box and marked-point information is read from a separate file. Usually this file has a .bb (for Bounding-Box) extension, and prefix agreeing with that of the graphics file. However, this is not a strict requirement, as some of the examples will show.

Indeed with .eps files produced using Mathematica, and displaying 2-dimensional graphics, it is convenient to use a coordinate system based upon that used to construct the contents of the image, rather than being based on its physical size. For such graphics we have chosen to use .mbb as the filename extension.

Footnotes

...WARMreader¹

* and provides the first part of the name.

... article²

TUGboat Vol 20 #3 (1999) pp.???, available online or as PDF preprint.

... article⁴

TUGboat Vol 18 #3 (1997) pp.159-163, available online.

... package³

see the TUGboat article⁴