VauCanSon-G

A package for drawing automata and graphs (Version 0.4)

VauCanSon-G is a package that allows to draw automata within texts written using LaTeX. It is a set of macros that uses commands of the beautiful PSTricks package, due to Timothy van Zandt and which is part of the current LaTeX distribution.

History and Changes

The design of VauCanSon-G implements the following underlying philosophy:

`simple' automata should be described with simple commands.
Every element of a figure can easily be given a style (which differs from the implicit one).
The complexity of commands (or the number of things to be remembered to use them) should gradually grow with the complexity of the figure composed by these commands.
It should be possible to handle the figures both in size and appearance without modifying them.

The following example shows how a simple automaton can be drawn with commands, in which only the minimal information needed (position and label of states, shape and label of transitions) is made explicit.

\begin{VCPicture}{(0,-2)(6,2)}
% states
\State[p]{(0,0)}{A} \State{(3,0)}{B} \State[r]{(6,0)}{C}
% initial--final
\Initial{A} \Final{C}
% transitions 
\EdgeL{A}{B}{a} \ArcL{B}{C}{b} \ArcL{C}{B}{b}
\LoopN{A}{a} \LoopS{C}{d}
%
\end{VCPicture}

The objectives of VauCanSon-G are achieved by the implicit definition of a large number of parameters that control the geometry of the figure: size of states, width of lines, etc. and by the definition of commands that allow to handle and modify these parameters.

A short presentation in french, but with some examples.

Some (very) small examples.

Some automata drawn with VauCanSon-G (postscript files):

In order to use VauCanSon-G, you should download the following files:

The manual.
vaucanson-g.sty that calls the package PSTricks and the files Vaucanson-G.tex.
Vaucanson-G.tex that contains VauCanSon-G's macros.
VCPref-default.tex is the default style.
VCColor-names.def contains the definition of color used in VauCanSon-G.

To use other styles of VauCanSon-G, you may download the following files:

VCPref-slides.tex: style for slides.
VCPref-beamer.tex style for beamer.
VCPref-myslide.tex to define its own style.

The complete distribution of VauCanSon-G 0.4:

contains all the VauCanSon-G files, including the source of the manual.

VauCanSon-G is based on the PSTricks package. The knowledge of this macro package is not necessary to use the VauCanSon-G commands. On the contrary, VauCanSon-G has somehow be written to save on it. In particular, the VauCanSon-G commands follow the simple (and rigid) syntax of LaTeX commands concerning the way the arguments are specified, and not the much more flexible syntax of PSTricks itself. But the call to PSTricks commands has the consequence that VauCanSon-G commands generate pieces of Postscript files which in turn has two main outcomes:

VauCanSon-G is not compatible with pdflatex;
the figures produced with VauCanSon-G are not likely to be seen on a DVI viewer: the space occupied by the figure will appear empty and, in most cases, the labels will appear at the bottom of it.

VauCanSon-G can be used with the beamer document class to design slides. The document class should be called with xcolor=pst,dvips options:

documentclass[xcolor=pst,dvips]{beamer}

All about Jacques de Vaucanson: English, French.

This is the 0.4 version of VauCanSon-G. Every remark or comment is welcome.

Sylvain.Lombardy

univ-mlv.fr

Jacques.Sakarovitch

enst.fr

Last modified: Oct 27 2008