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Re: [Phys-l] Grapher on macintosh



It turns out that Grapher application (a free Macintosh utility) is much more than a graphic calculator. This likely to be appreciated by those who compose Latex input files. The most difficult (and error- prone) part of composing such files is to type mathematical formulas correctly. Last night I typed the

y=x/2*sqrt(x)

in Grapher (in order to plot this simple function) and saved its Latex- formated version

y=\frac{x}{2}\cdot \mbox{sqrt}\left( x \right)

into my clipboard. Then I pasted it into the Latex editor. The way to accomplish this is simple.

a) Type the function and produce the plot.
b) Select the equation above the plotting area (it is already mathematically-formatted by Grapher) and right-click on it.
c) The contextual menu appears.

That menu offers three formats to save the plot (one of them is JPG) plus an option to save the Latex-formatted representation into the clipboard. I selected the last option and pasted the clipboard content into the Latex editor. That was it. Then I plotted another function, selected its Grapher representation, and extracted the Latex-formated version) into the clipboard. It worked very well again.

Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physisist
5 Horizon Road, apt.2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist at http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/