# New Lib (TeXtoIDL): Easy Greek letters in IDL

• Subject: New Lib (TeXtoIDL): Easy Greek letters in IDL
• From: mcraig(at)fornax (matt craig)
• Date: 11 Jul 1996 00:38:30 GMT
• Followup-To: comp.lang.idl-pvwave
• Newsgroups: comp.lang.idl-pvwave
• Organization: UC Berkeley

Greetings,

I have written a set of IDL functions to make Greek letters, special
symbols, and sub/superscripts easier to use in IDL.  The routines
translate a string written in the TeX typesetting notation to a string
in IDL format.  The TeX notation is MUCH easier to remember.  An
excerpt from the README is below.  Also in the README, though not
included below, is an introduction to TeX notation for those not
familiar with it.

>From the TeXtoIDL README:

PURPOSE:
The purpose of the TeXtoIDL routines is to make it simple to use Greek
letters, subscripts and superscripts in making labels for plots in
IDL.  This is accomplished by allowing the user to use TeX control
sequences for Greek letters and special symbols and for
sub/superscripts.  The TeX control sequences are simple and easy to
remember, especially if you already use TeX for writing papers (for
those unfamiliar with TeX, an explanation of that notation is below).
The translation is done for either vector or PostScript fonts.

EXAMPLE:
If you type. . .
IDL> str = TeXtoIDL("\rho^2 + 2\Gamma_{ij}")
IDL> print, str
STR             STRING    = '!7q!X!U2!N + 2!7C!X!Dij!N'
IDL> xyouts,.5,.5,str,CHARSIZE=2.,/NORM

then on the screen you will see the Greek letter rho with a 2 in the
exponent, and then a + and then a 2 and then the uppercase Greek
letter gamma, with an "ij" in the subscript.

The library is available at:

ftp://coma.berkeley.edu/pub/mcraig/idl/TeXtoIDL/

Enjoy,
Matt

-----------------------------------------------
Matt Craig
Astronomy Dept, U.C. Berkeley
mcraig@astro.berkeley.edu