Best way to export for LaTeX?

W

Weeble

I'm using Visio 2003 and trying to export a diagram to include in a
LaTeX document, which will be compiled with pdflatex. Unfortunately, I
can't find a way to faithfully transform my diagram into PDF for
inclusion. I tried exporting via CutePDF, but this seems to destroy
the alpha transparency in my diagram, replacing it with a very coarse
dithering pattern, which looks really bad on the screen. I'm guessing
that's because it behaves as a post-script printer, and as I
understand it post-script has no support for alpha transparency.
Exporting to XPS via the Microsoft XPS Document Writer does preserve
transparency, but I can't find any way to transform that into PDF. The
best I seem to be able to do right now is to export to PNG, but this
pushes up file-size and makes the document slow to render in Adobe
Reader.

I've got two questions:

1) Is there any way to do this nicely with Visio 2003?
2) I know that Visio 2007 can export to PDF - does it preserve
transparency properly?
 
J

John Goldsmith

Hello Weeble,

This is an interesting one. I'm not familiar with LaTeX and I've not test
this on 2003, but my guess would be not, based on a few tests below:

1) 2007 pdf export does not appear to retain transparency.

2) Printing to Distiller does, but with an odd hatching pattern.

3) XPS is perfect as you point out.

4) Printing to Distiller from previous XPS is also perfect.

So a bit of a walk round the block but at least you can get the results your
after with 2007. Not sure if anyone else has something to add?

Hope that helps

Best regards

John


John Goldsmith
www.visualSignals.typepad.co.uk
www.visualSignals.co.uk
 
W

Weeble

So a bit of a walk round the block but at least you can get the results your
after with 2007. Not sure if anyone else has something to add?
Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for all the research! Hopefully we'll be getting Visio
2007 at work some time soon.
 
W

Weeble

4) Printing to Distiller from previous XPS is also perfect.
Click to expand...

I just realised that Distiller isn't part of Visio or Office. Is it an
Adobe product? I see they have something called Distiller Server, but
that sounds awfully heavy-duty (and expensive!). What software do I
actually need to do this?
 

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