Index

• Section 1. About Asymptote
• Q1.1. What is Asymptote?
• Q1.2. How do I obtain Asymptote?
• Q1.3. Where can I ask questions about Asymptote?
• Q1.4. Why was the name Asymptote chosen?
• Q1.5. In the internal Asymptote source code, what does the name camp refer to?
  
  
• Section 2. Questions about installation and setup
• Q2.1. Is it possible to install Asymptote on Mac OS X?
• Q2.2. Why do I get the error Bad CPU type in executable on installing Asymptote from the MAC OS binary?
• Q2.3. Why do I get the error: can't locate file for: -lgccpp when I configure with ./configure --enable-gc=system?
• Q2.4. What do I do if I get the error: Error: pdfetex (file pdftex.cfg): cannot open config file...texinfo.tex appears to be broken?
• Q2.5. What do I do if I get the error: ! Undefined control sequence. l.6 @copying?
• Q2.6. Is it possible to integrate Asymptote into LaTeX?
• Q2.7. Is it possible to integrate Asymptote into latex or pdflatex?
• Q2.8. Do I need the tkinter package to install an Asymptote rpm binary?
• Q2.9. What does the path %USERPROFILE%\.asy\config.asy mean?
• Q2.10. Why do I get the error "string not terminated" when I try to set settings.dir="C:\asymptote\";?
• Q2.11. How do I change environment variables in Microsoft Windows, for example, in order to change the default PostScript viewer?
• Q2.12. Under Microsoft Windows XP, why do I get an error like "Invalid Parameter - 432x432"?
• Q2.13. Why does Asymptote freeze upon trying to draw a label with my MikTex installation under Microsoft Windows?
  
  
• Section 3. Questions about paths
• Q3.1. Why do I get a syntax error message when I specify an integer value for the path tension?
• Q3.2. Shouldn't dots always be the same size?
  
  
• Section 4. Questions about labels
• Q4.1. How do I get greek letters like omega to show up in my labels?
• Q4.2. Can Asymptote use matrices as labels?
• Q4.3. How do I tell Asymptote to load a particular LaTeX package, like mathptmx?
• Q4.4. How can I use international fonts in Asymptote labels?
• Q4.5. How can I use Fourier fonts?
• Q4.6. Is there any way to change the default appearance of the decimal separator, using a comma instead of a dot?
• Q4.7. How can I get a rotated label with the filled box rotated as well so that it fits the text?
• Q4.8. How can I rotate labels in a 3D figure?
• Q4.9. How can I draw some squares and circles of a fixed size and put a label in the middle of them?
• Q4.10. The binary operator * can be used to scale the color of a pen by a real number. Does this scaling factor have to be less than 1?
  
  
• Section 5. Questions about arrows
• Q5.1. How do I draw two arrows at arbitrary positions along a path?
• Q5.2. How do I reverse the direction of an arrowhead?
• Q5.3. How do I change the size of all arrows?
• Q5.4. Can I create other arrowhead styles?
  
  
• Section 6. Questions about 2D graphs
• Q6.1. How can I draw x axis ticks on the right side, with the tick labels on the left side (relative to the axis path)?
• Q6.2. How can I reposition the x axis label to three-quarters along the axis length?
• Q6.3. How can I move the x axis label down 10bp?
• Q6.4. Can I use different pens for the axis, the axis label, and the tick labels?
• Q6.5. How can I change the font type of the axes label?
• Q6.6. How can I change the font type of the tick labels on an axis?
• Q6.7. How can I prevent axes tick labels from rendering on top of each other?
• Q6.8. How do I make the plot region of a graph, ignoring labels and legends, have a fixed size?
• Q6.9. How can I plot a function f(x) within [0,1]x[0,1] without explicitly calculating the x values for which f(x) hits the boundary?
• Q6.10. Is it possible to define customized palettes?
• Q6.11. Is there an easy way to graph factorial functions nicely?
• Q6.12. How do I indicate that a certain length should be exactly the size I prescribe with no rescaling, within a picture which has its own size?
• Q6.13. How can I make the y axis display base-2 logarithmic values?
• Q6.14. How can I align the x axes of two graphs on the same figure?
• Q6.15. How can I change the direction of the y-axis, such that negatives values are on the upper y-axis?
• Q6.16. How can I fill a path with a function that defines the color of each location?
• Q6.17. Is there a way to draw a function that is not explicitly given, such as (y - 2)^2 = x - 1 ?
• Q6.18. Is it possible to reverse or stretch an axis?
• Q6.19. Why can't I use the UnFill option to draw graphs with empty markers?
• Q6.20. How can I force several images to use the same palette range (e.g. the entire 0-255 grayscale range)?
  
  
• Section 7. Questions about programming
• Q7.1. Is Asymptote an interpreter or a compiler?
• Q7.2. What is the difference between a frame and a picture?
• Q7.3. What is the difference between a path and a guide?
• Q7.4. What is a convenient way to declare and initialize an array of pictures?
• Q7.5. Is there a way to define functions that act on arrays in general (i.e. work for arrays of any type)?
• Q7.6. Is there any way to declare structures ahead of their definition, e.g. where struct A performs some operation on struct B, but B contains an A member?
• Q7.7. Where are static variables in for loops allocated?
• Q7.8. Is there a debugger for asy?
• Q7.9. Do you accept patches for Asymptote?
  
  
• Section 8. Questions about differences between Asymptote and MetaPost
• Q8.1. What is the equivalent of the MetaPost c[a,b] interpolation operator?
• Q8.2. How does picture scaling differ in Asymptote and MetaPost?
• Q8.3. How can I avoid automatic scaling of a picture?
• Q8.4. What is the equivalent of MetaPost ... command?
• Q8.5. What is the equivalent of the MetaPost pickup command?
• Q8.6. What is the equivalent of the MetaPost whatever command?
• Q8.7. What is the equivalent for the MetaPost command for lray - horiz*v - verti*u = whatever*(LightSource - R), a system of three linear equations for three unknowns: horiz, verti, whatever?
• Q8.8. In MetaPost, it is possible to have a drawing remain the same size in different pictures by defining a unit u and explicitly multiply all the coordinates by u. Is there a better way to do this in Asymptote?
• Q8.9. In MetaPost, one could produce tiling pictures by generating a picture, and then clipping the picture to a rectangle of fixed dimensions around the center of the picture. How is that done in Asymptote?
  
  
• Section 9. Questions about output
• Q9.1. How can I disable automatic invocation of the PS viewer after an asy file is done processing?
• Q9.2. How do I output jpeg images?
• Q9.3. Can I embed bitmaps (photos) into my drawings and position and scale them?
• Q9.4. Does Asymptote support direct PDF output?
• Q9.5. How to I produce large pictures of high quality in raster format (e.g. png, giff etc).
• Q9.6. Is it possible to produce multi-page documents with asymptote?