Some EPS figures for communications diagrams.

TeX is a type setting system which is widely used among the scientific writers. The capability of producing complex mathematical expressions accurately is the main reason for such popularity. Although working on TeX environment is not comfortable as working on well-known word processors coming from MS-Office, iWork, Open-Office, etc., once you get used to it, it becomes more easy to work around with it. Moreover, the ability of producing high-quality outputs, especially vector based documents, will be able to hold you with the TeX environment (for most cases).

One major issue of working with TeX is the need of eps or pdf type figures whenever you need to produce loss-less documents. There is number of applications which can be used to produce the vector graphics, but not everybody going to happy with working on them. On the other hand, applications such as Visio and Smart Draw are not only providing vast collection of arts for diagrams and flow charts, but also provide the facility to produce impressive diagrams even for novices. Thus, such applications are very popular among everybody.

However, the main limitation of such applications is to convert such diagrams to TeX compatible formats without losing their qualities. I have tried working on both Visio and Smart Draw to produce high resolution figures and diagrams, yet once the file conversion takes place (save as pdf, save as eps, jpg/png to eps), diagrams looks (slightly) blurred in the final TeX output. Another disadvantage is when creating flow diagrams; the equations written in Visio/Smart Draw are not neat as the rest of the equations in the TeX.

Therefore, I moved to Inkscape and Ipe for all kind of drawings which are required for my work. It was/is a pain working on such environments, yet the outputs are so blessed – and I am happy about the struggle with Ipe and Inkscape. A flow chart containing equations accurately and a diagram with loss-less vector format are shown below. Ipe needs additional adjustments in order to obtain the fonts and symbols according to the IEEE format. I did include that tip here.

      

- Flow diagram with equations -

      

- Vector graphic based figure -

I was managed to reproduce few of shapes related to communications in Ipe. The original shapes are coming from Visio. It was quite a time consuming process to produce them all + I was not familiar with all those tools. However, I manage to produce them with a certain level of satisfaction, and I thought to share them with you.

The EPS figures of above shape can be found here. The Ipe drawing project can be downloaded from here.

I will add more shapes whenever I produce.