Producing publication-quality figures

Old information:

So far I've only found one to produce decent-quality matlab figures for use with pdflatex. To get axes and figure labels to use latex fonts, you need to use psfrag, which is only available through latex/dvi2ps/ps2pdf. But if you want to use pdflatex then the psfrag package is unavailable. A solution is to compile a separate pdf file using the latex...ps2pdf and then insert that into the pdflatex project. The following makefile code could be used to do this transformation. It takes a sample.m file and produces a sample.pdf image (with as-tight-as-possible cropping) that can be included in your tex file.

%.pdf: %.m
   # default size here is 12cm wide but that can be overridden by a comment
   # in the m file of the form: "% FigureWidth 20"
   # this ridiculously convoluted sequence of latex programs appears to be the
   # only way to get the bounding boxes correct. pdfcrop and epstool sometimes make
   # serious errors when given the output of latex|dvips|ps2pdf, so we have
   # to use ps2epsi.
   echo "set(0,'defaulttextinterpreter','none');" >$*_0.m
   cat $< >>$*_0.m
   echo -n "laprint(gcf,'$*','asonscreen','on','width'," >>$*_0.m
   echo -n $(shell grep FigureWidth $< | sed 's/.*[^0-9]\([0-9][0-9]*\).*/\1/') >>$*_0.m
   echo ",'keepfontprops','on');" >>$*_0.m
   matlab -nodesktop -nosplash -r "$*_0; exit;"
   echo "\documentclass{minimal}" >$*.0.tex
   echo "\usepackage{graphicx,color,psfrag}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\pagestyle{empty}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\begin{document}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\input{$*.tex}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\end{document}" >>$*.0.tex
   latex $*.0.tex
   dvips $*.0.dvi
   ps2epsi $*.0.ps
   ps2pdf -dEPSCrop $*.0.epsi
   mv $*.0.epsi.pdf $@
   rm $*_0.m $*.{0.aux,0.log,0.pfg,0.tex,0.dvi,0.epsi,0.ps,tex,eps}

Converting xfig, inkscape and gnuplot figures

Here is makefile code to convert .fig, .gpl and .svg files to .pdf for inclusion in latex documents with pdflatex Note that when converting xfig files, the ONLY formats that correctly support latex strings are the various combined ps/pdf/latex formats and metapost (mp). The former will require that you use psfrag/latex/ps2pdf or that you compile a separate pdf file like in the gnuplot case. It's just simpler to use metapost.

%.pdf: %.fig
   fig2dev -L mp $< >$*.mp
   mptopdf --rawmp --latex $*.mp
   mv $*-0.pdf $@
   rm $*.{log,mp,mpx,0}

%.pdf: %.svg
   inkscape -f $< --export-pdf=$@

%.pdf: %.gpl
   echo "set terminal epslatex colour" >$*.0.gpl
   echo "set output \"$*.tex\"" >>$*.0.gpl
   cat $< >>$*.0.gpl
   gnuplot $*.0.gpl
   epstopdf $*.eps
   echo "\documentclass{minimal}" >$*.0.tex
   echo "\usepackage{amsmath,graphicx,color}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\pagestyle{empty}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\begin{document}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\input{$*.tex}" >>$*.0.tex
   echo "\end{document}" >>$*.0.tex
   pdflatex $*.0.tex
   pdfcrop $*.0.pdf
   mv $*.0-crop.pdf $@
   rm $*.{0.gpl,0.aux,0.log,0.pdf,0.tex,eps,tex}