A CAS Macro Package as LaTeX Graphical Command Generator and Its Applications

Abstract

Due to its superb drawing utilities and symbolic computation capabilities, computer algebra system (CAS) has become one of the most preferred tools for drawing scientific artworks. However, using the graphical images generated by CAS in scientific documents is a different story. It is not so easy for us to guarantee the quality of both graphical images and documents simultaneously. For instance, quite a number of mathematics teachers in universities are using LaTeX as their daily tool for editing high-quality mathematical documents, since it offers remarkable publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting. However the use of graphics generated by CAS in LaTeX tends to be unsatisfactory. In fact, it is not so easy task for usual LaTeX users to manipulate such graphical images. Moreover, a large sized graphical file disturbs fast web-tech based communication. To fill this gap, the authors have developed a macro package KETpic designed for CAS to supply high-quality graphics in LaTeX documents. In this paper, we will show the newly developed functionality of KETpic to easily generate new environments or graphical commands of LaTeX, so that LaTeX can be endowed with much wider use and much greater facility.