Tips for

• MATLAB
• Subversion (SVN)
• Preparing conference papers with latex/dvips/ps2pdf
• ACM/IEEE camera ready process
• OmniGraffle

Contact me: dhalperi@cs

Back to Daniel Halperin's webpage.

MATLAB

Increasing Datatip Precision

By default, MATLAB only displays four digits of precision when using the Datatip tool in plots. This can be really irritating when you're trying to get an exact spot in a large file:

You can load an alternate datatip file every time you open a plot, or you can export the cursor data and then access the coordinates of that point inside the object in the command window, but I really wanted another way.

So I found the default datatip file and modified it myself.

• On Mac OSX: /Applications/MATLAB_R2008a/toolbox/matlab/graphics/@graphics/@datacursor/default_getDatatipText.m
• On Linux: /opt/matlab/toolbox/matlab/graphics/@graphics/@datacursor/default_getDatatipText.m

This file has two lines of text reading:

• DEFAULT_DIGITS = 4; % Display 4 digits of x,y position

I changed the 4's to 8's.

Subversion

Creating and using patches with SVN

• How do I create a patch to give back to an upstream maintainer?

  svn diff --diff-cmd `which diff` -x "-bNaur" > my.patch

• How do I apply the patch?

  patch -p0 < my.patch

SVN doesn't recognize my PDF/PS files as binary

For individual files, SVN will treat them as binary files if you mark their mime-type as application:

svn propset svn:mime-type application/pdf my.pdf

Or, you can set options for all files of a certain extension by editing ~/.subversion/config:

 [miscellany]
 enable-auto-props = yes                # enables SVN's automatic labelling
 [auto-props]
 *.pdf = svn:mime-type=application/pdf
 *.ps = svn:mime-type=application/ps

Preparing conference papers with latex/dvips/ps2pdf/pdflatex

ACM/IEEE camera ready process

• How can I tell whether all my fonts are embedded?

  There is a really useful utility, pdffonts, which is part of the xpdf package. Install xpdf via fink or apt-get or whatever. Then run pdffonts <your PDF>. The "emb" column is the one you're interested in!

• Not all my fonts are embedded. What do I do?

  First, try recompiling with the [draft] option on your document style in latex, and rerun pdffonts. This will help you identify whether the problem is in the main PDF or in an included figure.

  Sometimes you can fix problems in PS or PDF files using ps2pdf:

  ps2pdf -dEmbedAllFonts=true -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress paper.[ps or pdf] paper_embed.pdf

OmniGraffle

• How does one make radio emission symbols in OmniGraffle?

  Use arc_bits. It's surprisingly great.