TPIC2PDFTEX(1)

✨ TPIC2PDFTEX(1) — the Tex Live Manpage ✨

okay so this is the manpage for tpic2pdftex, and it's giving main character energy 💅🎀 it's part of the Tex Live manpage collection, so you know it's serious 🤓

🌸 NAME 🌸

tpic2pdftex — convert tpic \specials so pdftex can use them 🦋

💖 SYNOPSIS 💖

pic -t somefile.pic | tpic2pdftex > somefile.tex

then run somefile.tex through pdftex/pdflatex, and you're literally done ✨

🧚 DESCRIPTION 🧚

ngl this is an experimental awk script 🙈 it takes tpic \specials (the kind made by (groff-)pic) and turns them into pdfTeX \pdfliteral sections, so pdftex can finish the job for you. no cap, it's giving glow-up 🔥

📝 NOTES 📝

Current version: 1.97 💜

okay so if you want to know how tpic \specials work, check out Goossens, Rahtz, Mittelbach: The LaTeX Graphics Companion, Addison-Wesley, 1997, pp. 464. it's the go-to book and it is iconic 📚✨

💀 BUGS 💀

⚠️ bestie, read these before you get too excited, okay?

• spline curve shapes are not fully authentic 😭 the algorithm is unknown, so they might look a little different
• the bounding box does not care about line thickness (that's a groff pic feature) 🙈
• splines might be outside the bounding box 💀
• fill color does not work correctly for arrowheads, and that's a pic limitation, not the script's fault 🫶

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

pic(1), grap(1), groff(1), awk(1), pdftex(1) 💜

that's the tea on tpic2pdftex 🫶 it's from GNU, dated 2008-08-01, and it is still giving experimental vibes so use it with a little extra love 💖🌈