asymptote support

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I would like to see support for asymptote in the Makefile. Asymptote
(http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/) is a powerful vector graphics language.
It can be used with Latex in two different modes:
-inline source: the preamble uses \include{asymptote}; all you need to do
is running 'asy filename' (between the first and last latex run, as in
'bibtex filename'). As far as I know, this can't be cached and run only if
the images are changed.
-external source: the code for images is in external files with extension
".asy"; running 'asy filename.asy' compiles the images and generates one or
more .eps files. The name is usually filename.eps, but this can be changed
inside the source using the shipout("anotherfilename") instruction. This
works more or less like gnuplot.

When pdflatex is used, asy needs the switch "-f pdf" to produce pdf files.

More information on asy+latex integration on
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7094154/Asymptote-and-Latex-an-Integration-Guide-Dario
-Teixeira

Please feel free to contact me if you need any more information.

Thanks for the excellent makefile, and keep up the good work!

Original issue reported on code.google.com by f.pol...@gmail.com on 9 Apr 2010 at 8:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I'm installing asymptote now to see what can be done.  Here are my preliminary 
thoughts:

1) If I can find something in the .aux or .fls or .log file after the first 
pdflatex invocation that indicates that asy 
needs to be run, that should be fairly easy to do for inline graphics

2) For external source, I should just be able to build them like anything else. 
 That should be extra simple.  
Obviously, external source would have the disadvantage of not having access to 
extra command definitions 
(for notational consistency), so I can see that having the ability to do inline 
stuff will be important.

I'm a little concerned about people using the shipout("unexpected_name") 
approach in the asymptote source.  
That sounds hard to detect and deal with, and the makefile is definitely not 
going to be able to generate 
dependencies for those cases.  I think we'll just say it isn't supported (you 
can always create your own make 
rule in Makefile.ini for the odd cases).

Thoughts?

Original comment by shiblon on 9 Apr 2010 at 4:29

• Added labels: Priority-Low, Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Priority-Medium, Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

1) If you use asymptote in the embedded mode, on the first run the contents of 
the
\begin{asy}...\end{asy} sections get copied into a file called documentname.asy,
which you may compile into eps/pdf images with "asy documentname".
I have made a couple of trials, and unfortunately the .log and .aux file are
identical whether the figures are changed (with respect to the last run) or 
not. The
documentname.asy file gets overwritten, and its timestamp updated, in both 
cases.
This does not play well with makefiles. Of course this is an Asymptote issue, 
not
yours. A possible solution would be to compile the .asy file through asymptote 
anyway
(slow, adds one asymptote+one latex run to every compilation); another one 
would be
to take a md5sum of the asy file and recompile only if it has changed (a bit 
kludgy).
I will submit a bug report to Asymptote asking for a notification to be added.

2) support for external .asy files (as in Gnuplot) would be great! I am looking
forward to see it released.

3) For shipout("unexpected name"), I agree with you that you can't do anything 
about
it inside the Makefile. If one insists on using it, they can set the 
dependencies
manually in Makefile.ini .

Thanks for the quick replies!

Original comment by f.pol...@gmail.com on 10 Apr 2010 at 11:26

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for your response.  I finally got asymptote installed (for some reason 
that also necessitated replacing 
teTeX with texlive, but I digress - I wanted to get texlive anyway, since that 
seems to be what people are using 
these days).

I already check diffs for dependencies in several places in the makefile, so 
that's totally doable.  I'll be looking 
into this in the next couple of weeks (work got crazy, so I have to take a 
breather from the makefile udpates).

Original comment by shiblon on 11 Apr 2010 at 1:08

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sorry I haven't gotten to this yet.  I've been swamped at work.  I still intend 
to look at it sometime.  Are you 
getting along without native support meanwhile?

Original comment by shiblon on 14 May 2010 at 2:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Do you have an example asymptote file (not for embedding, but for *.asy -> 
*.pdf generation) that you can attach here?  I'd like to play with this, now.

Original comment by shiblon on 4 Jan 2011 at 3:58