Dear collaborators,

This build directory contains the packages 'tikz', 'pgfplots', and 'funkey'.
'tikz' and 'pgfplots' are provided to make sure we all use the same version of
these packages. 'funkey' is a set of macros that I found helpful. In
particular, it provides the macro \includetikz which can be used to include
tikz pictures from separate files (see also README.funkey).

Without Makefiles
=================

  If you don't like to use Makefiles to compile your documents, you can use
  pdflatex (or whatever you are using) directly. In this case, please make sure
  that you set the TEXINPUTS environment variable to contain the
  './build/include//' directory (with two trailing slashes). This way we make
  sure that we all use the same versions of the LaTeX packages TikZ and PGFPlots
  and that the package 'funkey' is found. If you are using a common
  directory for figures/plots/etc that are shared across different documents,
  TEXINPUTS should also include this directory (with one trailing slash).

  Usage example without Makefile:
  -------------------------------

    TEXINPUTS=../common/:../build/include//: pdflatex document.tex

With Makefiles
==============

  If, however, you use the provided Makefile, all TikZ/PGFPlots pictures that are
  included via

    \includetikz{path/to/an/example}

  from a file ./path/to/an/example.tikz.tex (relative to the including TeX file
  or the common directory) will be extracted into a pdf file and in a second pass
  included into the main document. This way, you don't have to rebuild all
  figures just because you changed some text somewhere. This is especially useful
  for larger plots.

  For that, copy the supplied Makefile.template to the directory containing
  your (La)TeX document, rename it to Makefile and adjust the paths in it.

  On a Unix-like system with basic LaTeX packages, pdflatex and pdfcrop
  installed, typing

    make

  in a directory containing a Makefile and a tex-file should be enough to build
  the document and TikZ/PGFPlots figures and display it using the make variable
  $(PDFVIEWER) (defaults to 'evince', if you don't overwrite this).

  Additionally, a call to

    make pdfexport

  will create a TikZ/PGFPlots free version of the LaTeX sources in the directory
  '.export'. This version does not depend on TikZ/PGFPlots anymore and can thus
  be used to send LaTeX sources to journals (all figures are supplied as pdf
  files, in this case).

Happy TeXing :)