ASP Mini-workshop: TikZ diagrams for technical papers
Rodney Kennedy (ANU)
APPLIED SIGNAL PROCESSING SERIESDATE: 2012-06-21
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU
CONTACT: JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address.
ABSTRACT:
PGF is a TeX macro package for generating graphics. It is platform- and format-independent and works together with the most important TeX backend drivers, including pdftex and dvips. It comes with a user-friedly syntax layer called TikZ."
This is a mini-workshop for those interested in mastering TikZ/PGF/PGFPlots to generate professional, small kB, simple source code, accurate, maintainable, vector-based, tight bounding box, latex compatible graphics for technical papers. It is primarily directed at ASP researchers. Graphics that can be rendered by TikZ can be loosely grouped into three categories: system block diagrams; plots of curves such as emulating what matlab can generate; and general diagrams such as multi-path multiple antenna propagation diagrams, finite state machines, tanner graphs, mind-maps, or virtually anything you can draw by hand.
Three sub-topics will be covered depending on the time available: 1) Workflow model: a workflow model for organizing TikZ generated figures into technical papers based on the " ikzexternalize" feature of TikZ will be presented. This will be illustrated with the figures and latex for a recently submitted paper.
2) Moving matlab generated figures to TikZ: the problems with matlab graphics will be emphasized and it will be shown how to automatically convert matlab figures to TikZ. There are two methodologies: i) generating TikZ stubs using the "matlab2tikz" matlab script, and ii) writing your own matlab scripts to generate TikZ code.
3) Directly rendering graphs using PGFPlots: render plots from either mathematical definitions of functions or tabulated data.
Further information about this mini-workshop: i) it is not a primer on using TikZ (the manual for TikZ/PGF is 726 pages); but an example driven exercise to convince you to start using it; ii) it does not present style guidelines or human interface guidelines for properly proportioned diagrams; TikZ gives precise control but cannot compensate for lack of design sense.
BIO:
Professor Kennedy is a past Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship holder, winner of the Australian Telecommunications and Electronics Research Board Medal, Fellow of the IEEE, co-author of a plethora of papers and one book, and prior to undertaking his doctorate study, worked for several years in Radio Astronomy in the Division of Radiophysics CSIRO. He has shaped and glassed two windsurfers, and co-supervised to completion 34 PhD students. Rod excels at administration, a quality that he attributes to a previous life experience as an African Dung Beetle.
