Tips and tricks

• Note that Postscript files produced by Export - EPS are considerably larger in size than the same files generated via latex -> dvips. This is due to the way how Java handles the Postscript printing internally. Keep this in mind if you want to include a bunch of small figures in your document: it is then probably preferable to use the LaTeX output.
• It is a good idea to use the refresh button from time to time, especially if there are a lot of objects on the screen and if you are using antialiasing.
• Instead of producing EPS figures and including them into your document, you may as well cut-and-paste the LaTeX output of JaxoDraw into your own LaTeX source code. Like that you may avoid the proliferation of numerous Postscript files to be distributed with your source code. Note however that you will have to include axodraw4j in the header of your LaTeX file (put \usepackage{axodraw4j} somewhere before \begin{document}) and you will probably have to distribute the axodraw4j.sty file along with your source code because it is not part of any standard LaTeX distribution.
• To add multiple arrows to objects (such as loops, for example), or to draw arrows on objects that do not support them (photon and gluon objects in particular), use fermion lines with very small length (5 points should do the job). Use the edit menu, to give the arrow the direction you need and then move it to the wanted location.
• For Mac OS X users: note that there are some Mac specific quirks (mostly due to Apple's Java implementation), please read the file README_Mac in the MacOSX subdirectory of the source distribution for some further information.

FAQ

Why does my text not appear in the LaTeX output?

Postscript text mode and LaTeX text mode appear mutually exclusive in any derived output (see the text section). If you want your text to appear in the LaTeX output, use the TeX icon to enter your text.

Why is there this funny fcolorbox command in the Latex text file generated by JaxoDraw?

The \fcolorbox command was introduced because otherwise dvips does not recognize the bounding box coordinates correctly for the conversion to EPS. This is a workaround that we used ourselves when working with axodraw.sty, if you cut and paste the LaTeX output into your own documents, or if you don't want an EPS, you may erase the \fcolorbox command.

When I try to do a Latex-EPS export or preview, I get the following error message: java.io.FileNotFoundException: Jaxo_tmp.tex (Permission denied), and no files are created. What does that mean?

Apparently your file permissions are set such that you don't have write access to the JaxoDraw home directory. Jaxo_tmp.tex is a temporary file that is created during the LaTeX compilation process (among others). To check that, go one directory up from the JaxoDraw home directory and type:

ls -dl JaxoDraw-$VERSION

(replace $VERSION by the version of JaxoDraw that you have installed). This should give you a 'drwx' in the beginning of the line. If this is not the case, type

chmod u+rwx JaxoDraw-$VERSION

and try again.

I compiled JaxoDraw myself from sources. If I start the program as described in the user guide everything is fine, but when I try to run it from a different directory than the home directory, I get a "NoClassDefFoundError". How can I run JaxoDraw from any location I like?

If you are not using the jar executable and would like to run JaxoDraw from a different location than the program's home directory, you have to tell the java interpreter where it can find the executable .class files. This is done with the -classpath (or -cp) option.

Example: Suppose you have put the JaxoDraw home directory JaxoDraw-1.2 into your home directory $HOME. Going into the JaxoDraw-1.2/ directory and typing

java JaxoDraw/JaxoDraw

will work as expected, but typing

java JaxoDraw-1.2/JaxoDraw/JaxoDraw

gives you the above error. What you need to type instead is

java -cp JaxoDraw-1.2 JaxoDraw/JaxoDraw

(note the space between the classpath variable and the executable). An alternative is to create the jar executable (see the installation section) which may be executed from everywhere with the -jar option:

java -jar JaxoDraw-1.2/JaxoDraw.jar