Honestly, the sky is the limit.  I agree with what everyone else is
saying, it depends on the diagram, your skill level, comfort level,
etc.  Personally, I export to HTML, not LaTeX, plus I'm more
old-school.  I just use Perl w/GD to make many of my images.  The PNG
export is easily viewed/inserted into my .org files and I can include
the code in my .org files as well if I choose.

Point is, any programming language can also be used to generate images
as well.  Ditaa, PlantUML, GnuPlot, etc, help do the job faster for
specific types of data/drawings.  Anything outside the box (no pun
intended), you need something more "arbitrary" like LibreDraw, GD, etc.


On 10/04/2016 06:54 AM, Peter Davis wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2016, at 09:11 AM, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
>> I know lots of you use Emacs and org mode to prepare scholarly books
>> and papers, either doing the HTML or, more probably, the Latex
>> export. Question: Let's say I want to produce a math text with
>> Emacs/org-mode/Latex. What is the best way to make diagrams and
>> images? I've seen things like Inkscape and LibreOffice Draw. But then
>> there is Gnuplot and Tikz. Yes, what Tikz does seems optimal, but the
>> learning curve is a year's sabbatical. Just wondering what you people
>> are using to do your images.
>
> I think it really depends on what kinds of diagrams and images you're
> trying to use. I've been using embedded dot (GraphViz) diagrams with
> org for a number of years, and I find it fantastically helpful for
> things like graphs (nodes connected by arrows, optionally all
> labelled), data structure diagrams, etc. ... the basic boxes and lines
> kind of drawing.
>
> I also just discovered ditaa, which seems also good for boxes and
> lines, but with more freedom (and more work to edit the input).
>
> I've also used PlantUML for modelling diagrams.
>
> I know others are using embedded R code to get data visualization
> graphics automatically.
>
> This page gives some examples:
> http://ehneilsen.net/notebook/orgExamples/org-examples.html. There
> should be an authoritative page on graphics formats, but I'm not aware
> of one.
>
> Most of these use separate packages to create the graphics, but there
> are hooks in org to call the external programs and include the results
> in the document.
>
> -pd
>
> --
>   Peter Davis
>   www.techcurmudgeon.com
>