This is the list of Frequently Asked Questions about Asymptote (asy).
Index
- Section 1. About Asymptote
- Q1.1. What is Asymptote?
- Q1.2. How do I obtain Asymptote?
- Q1.3. Where can I ask questions about Asymptote?
- Q1.4. Why was the name Asymptote chosen?
- Q1.5. In the internal Asymptote source code, what does the name
camp
refer to?
- Section 2. Questions about installation and setup
- Q2.1. Is it possible to install Asymptote on Mac OS
X?
- Q2.2. Why do I get the error
Bad CPU type in executable
on installing Asymptote from the MAC OS
binary?
- Q2.3. What do I do if I get the error:
Error: pdfetex (file pdftex.cfg): cannot open config
file...texinfo.tex appears to be broken
?
- Q2.4. What do I do if I get the error:
! Undefined control sequence. l.6 @copying
?
- Q2.5. Is it possible to integrate Asymptote into
LaTeX?
- Q2.6. Is it possible to integrate Asymptote into latex or
pdflatex?
- Q2.7. Do I need the
tkinter
package to install an Asymptote rpm binary?
- Q2.8. What does the path
%USERPROFILE%\.asy\config.asy
mean?
- Q2.9. Why do I get the error "string not terminated" when I try to
set
settings.dir="C:\asymptote\";
?
- Q2.10. How do I change environment variables in Microsoft Windows, for
example, in order to change the default PostScript
viewer?
- Q2.11. Under Microsoft Windows XP, why do I get an error like "Invalid
Parameter - 432x432"?
- Q2.12. Why does Asymptote freeze upon trying to draw a label with my MikTex
installation under Microsoft Windows?
- Section 3. Questions about paths
- Q3.1. Why do I get a syntax error message when I specify an integer value
for the path tension?
- Q3.2. Shouldn't dots always be the same size?
- Section 4. Questions about labels
- Q4.1. How do I get Greek letters like omega to show up in my
labels?
- Q4.2. Can Asymptote use matrices as labels?
- Q4.3. How do I tell Asymptote to load a particular LaTeX package, like
mathptmx
?
- Q4.4. How can I use international fonts in Asymptote
labels?
- Q4.5. How can I use Fourier fonts?
- Q4.6. Is there any way to change the default appearance of the decimal
separator, using a comma instead of a dot?
- Q4.7. How can I get a rotated label with the filled box rotated as well so
that it fits the text?
- Q4.8. How can I rotate labels in a 3D figure?
- Q4.9. How can I draw some squares and circles of a fixed size and put a
label in the middle of them?
- Q4.10. The binary operator * can be used to scale the color of a pen by a
real number. Does this scaling factor have to be less than
1?
- Q4.11. Why is the space after the comma decimal separator in my locale so
large?
- Q4.12. How can I prevent
texpreamble("\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}")
from changing the page size?
- Section 5. Questions about arrows
- Q5.1. How do I draw two arrows at arbitrary positions along a
path?
- Q5.2. How do I reverse the direction of an arrowhead?
- Q5.3. How do I change the size of all arrows?
- Q5.4. Can I create other arrowhead styles?
- Section 6. Questions about 2D graphs
- Q6.1. How can I draw x axis ticks on the right side, with the tick labels on
the left side (relative to the axis path)?
- Q6.2. How can I reposition the x axis label to three-quarters along the axis
length?
- Q6.3. How can I move the x axis label down 10bp?
- Q6.4. Can I use different pens for the axis, the axis label, and the tick
labels?
- Q6.5. How can I change the font type of the axes
label?
- Q6.6. How can I change the font type of the tick labels on an
axis?
- Q6.7. How can I prevent axes tick labels from rendering on top of each
other?
- Q6.8. How do I make the plot region of a graph, ignoring labels and legends,
have a fixed size?
- Q6.9. How can I plot a function f(x) within [0,1]x[0,2] without explicitly
calculating the x values for which f(x) hits the
boundary?
- Q6.10. Is it possible to define customized palettes?
- Q6.11. Is there an easy way to graph factorial functions
nicely?
- Q6.12. How do I indicate that a certain length should be exactly the size I
prescribe with no rescaling, within a picture which has its own
size?
- Q6.13. How can I make the y axis display base-2 logarithmic
values?
- Q6.14. How can I align the x axes of two graphs on the same
figure?
- Q6.15. How can I change the direction of the y-axis, such that negatives
values are on the upper y-axis?
- Q6.16. How can I fill a path with a function that defines the color of each
location?
- Q6.17. Is there a way to draw a function that is not explicitly given, such
as (y - 2)^2 = x - 1 ?
- Q6.18. Is it possible to reverse or stretch an axis?
- Q6.19. Why can't I use the UnFill option to draw graphs with empty
markers?
- Q6.20. How can I force several images to use the same palette range (e.g. the
entire 0-255 grayscale range)?
- Section 7. Questions about programming
- Q7.1. Is Asymptote an interpreter or a compiler?
- Q7.2. What is the difference between a frame and a picture?
- Q7.3. What is the difference between a path and a guide?
- Q7.4. What is a convenient way to declare and initialize an array of
pictures?
- Q7.5. Is there a way to define functions that act on arrays in general (i.e.
work for arrays of any type)?
- Q7.6. Is there any way to declare structures ahead of their definition, e.g.
where struct A performs some operation on struct B, but B contains an
A member?
- Q7.7. Where are static variables in for loops allocated?
- Q7.8. Is there a debugger for asy?
- Q7.9. Do you accept patches for Asymptote?
- Section 8. Questions about differences between Asymptote and
MetaPost
- Q8.1. What is the equivalent of the MetaPost c[a,b] interpolation operator?
- Q8.2. How does picture scaling differ in Asymptote and
MetaPost?
- Q8.3. How can I avoid automatic scaling of a picture?
- Q8.4. What is the equivalent of MetaPost ... command?
- Q8.5. What is the equivalent of the MetaPost pickup
command?
- Q8.6. What is the equivalent of the MetaPost whatever
command?
- Q8.7. What is the equivalent for the MetaPost command for
lray - horiz*v - verti*u = whatever*(LightSource -
R)
, a system of three linear equations for three unknowns:
horiz, verti, whatever
?
- Q8.8. In MetaPost, it is possible to have a drawing remain the same size in
different pictures by defining a unit
u
and explicitly multiply all the coordinates by
u
. Is there a better way to do this in Asymptote?
- Q8.9. In MetaPost, one could produce tiling pictures by generating a
picture, and then clipping the picture to a rectangle of fixed
dimensions around the center of the picture. How is that done in
Asymptote?
- Section 9. Questions about output
- Q9.1. How can I disable automatic invocation of the PS viewer after an asy
file is done processing?
- Q9.2. How do I output jpeg images?
- Q9.3. Can I embed bitmaps (photos) into my drawings and position and scale
them?
- Q9.4. Does Asymptote support direct PDF output?
- Q9.5. How to I produce large pictures of high quality in raster format (e.g.
png, giff etc).
- Q9.6. Is it possible to produce multi-page documents with asymptote?
Asymptote
- 2024-10-07
Extracted from Asymptote Frequently Asked Questions,
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