MathPSfrag 2: Convenient LaTeX Labels in Mathematica

Many programs producing EPS graphics do not allow the inclusion of LATEX commands. While there exist several solutions to work around these difficulties, they all have various drawbacks. (See [1] for a discussion of several methods and an alternative approach to overcome these difficulties.) In this article, we will focus on a particular existing solution, the PSfrag package [2], which provides LATEX macros allowing the user to replace pieces of text (“tags”) in an EPS file by an arbitrary LATEX construct. However, for PSfrag to work, the application must write tags unaltered into the EPS file. For Mathematica [3, 4], this requirement amounts to using single words, strictly consisting of alphanumeric characters only. As a consequence, the user has to work most of the time with an inconveniently labeled graphic and is furthermore required to keep track of the tags used in the substitution macros. On the other hand, it is not always possible to use Mathematica’s conventional export function as it produces EPS files requiring the inclusion of additional fonts into the document. This means configuring the local TEX installation such that it finds the fonts provided by Wolfram Inc. [5, 6, 7], a process often not being under the author’s control. A way out is to include the fonts into the EPS file and set the font family to a standard PostScript one. The required steps are version dependent— the latest version as of this writing, 6.0, has sane defaults—for 5.2, the following commands are required: