Desktop Publishing with LaTeX

fig2sty allows you to generate fancy layouts with LaTeX. The basic idea is to draw layout definitions interactively with XFig and transform this definition to a LaTeX style file. You can then use LaTeX to typeset your text into arbitrarily shaped polygons (frames) within the layout.

You can even add any graphical elements in the layout definition which will appear in the LaTeX output as a background picture.

Part of fig2sty is XFig.pm, a simple parser for xfig-drawings.

You will need LaTeX, Perl5 and XFig to run this software.

Updated version 0.1 (24th January 2003) (thanks to David McKelvie/R. Laboissiere)

Note: This software is alpha. We have used it here extensively for poster creation, but it has never been tested seriously. See also

Know Bugs

download fig2sty.tar.gz
Debian package fig2sty (by Rafael Laboissiere)
manual
XFig.pm POD (by Rafael Laboissiere)
a simple example

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