Aside: drawing a colored square with native LaTeX code

Aside: drawing a colored square with native LaTeX code

The preceding example shows how to include an external graphics file into a LaTeX document. The example is intentionally simple, to illustrate the concept. For this very simple example, LaTeX is smart enough to draw the picture without using an external graphics program.

To see how native LaTeX code can produce a red square, copy the following example with the mouse, save the file as square.tex, and run the commands latex square, dvips square, and ghostview square.ps & to preview the output on the screen.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{graphics,color}

\begin{document}

\newsavebox{\mysquare}
\savebox{\mysquare}{\textcolor{red}{\rule{1in}{1in}}}

This is a red square:
\usebox{\mysquare}

Here is a rotated and scaled square:
\scalebox{0.696}{\rotatebox{69.6}{\usebox{\mysquare}}}

Here is a resized square with the aspect ratio distorted:

\resizebox{0.69\textwidth}{0.6\textheight}{\usebox{\mysquare}}

\end{document}

The example also shows how LaTeX can save and reuse a picture via the savebox command. 

The Math 696 course pages were last modified April 5, 2005.
These pages are copyright © 1995-2005 by Harold P. Boas. All rights reserved.
 

Aside: drawing a colored square with native LaTeX code