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LaTeX/Tikz animation goodness.

Overview:

Each diagram corresponds to a single main LaTeX file, e.g. the sessions diagram corresponds to sessions.tex. All of the diagrams depend on a common library of commands definitions and initialization in the diagrams.tex file.

Each frame of animation advances processing time by 1/9 of a minute (i.e. 0.111). I don't remember why I set it up this way originally, I just did, and it's worked out pretty well.

The main command used to render a single frame is \TriggersDiagram. It takes two parameters*:

  1. The processing time for the frame.
  2. The Tikz commands used to draw any state, output, etc primitives on the screen.

*Technically it takes three parameters. The truly first parameter is the color of the horizontal line indicating what time it is in processing time, for fading that line out. This is typically only used for the final frames of the animation.

Most of the rendering is done using other custom commands for basic primitives, like \DrawState and \DrawOutput. Poking around in the existing files and the command definitions should be pretty helpful for figuring them all out.

Setup (Mac - RECOMMENDED):

  1. Install Homebrew and Homebrew-Cask:

    /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew tap caskroom/cask

  2. Install mactex, TexShop, and ImageMagick:

    brew cask install mactex
brew cask install texshop
brew install imagemagick

  3. Install Roboto font

    cd /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
wget http://mirrors.ctan.org/fonts/roboto.zip
sudo unzip roboto.zip

  4. Install FiraSans font (font details)

    cd /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local
wget http://mirrors.ctan.org/fonts/newtxsf.zip
sudo unzip newtxsf.zip

You should then be able to load, edit, and render PDFs in TexShop. PDF → GIF conversion is detailed below.g

Setup (Linux Workstation):

NOTE: I never fully managed to get fonts working properly on Linux. You'll either have to figure out how to make that work, or comment out the FiraSans lines in diagrams.tex to get this to render on your workstation. Or just use a Mac, as above.

Some subset of the following commands are needed to install the necessary LaTeX packages (I'm not sure which, since I was totally shooting in the dark trying to get this set up the first time, and I know of no good way to return to a clean state to try it all over again from the beginning):

tlmgr init-usertree
tlmgr update --self
tlmgr install texgreek cbfonts cbfonts-fd tlmgr install greek-fontenc fira

You'll also need the pdflatex and convert (i.e. Image Magick) commands installed. For me, they already were (not sure if I installed them manually once upon a time, or not).

LaTeX to PDF:

Mac: Open file in TexShop, Render to PDF (command+t).

Linux: pdflatex sessions.tex

PDF to GIF:

# High-resolution
NAME=sessions && time convert -density 300 -delay 15 -loop 0 $NAME.pdf $NAME.gif

# Low-resolution
NAME=sessions && time convert -density 150 -delay 15 -loop 0 $NAME.pdf $NAME.gif

Extract frames from GIF to PNG:

# First frame
NAME=sessions && convert "$NAME.gif[0]" $NAME-first.png

# Last frame
NAME=sessions && convert "$NAME.gif[-1]" $NAME-final.png