Some old drafts

src/content/blog/tikz-svg.md

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+---
+title: TikZ
+pubDate: 2025-02-06T19:00:00Z
+description: Converting TikZ graphics into svg graphics.
+---
+At some point a man has to realize that they went down a rabbit-hole without any way to escape it. TikZ is one such rabbit-hole and, yes, I am that man.
+
+In broad terms [TikZ](https://tikz.dev/) is a programming language within [LaTeX](https://www.latex-project.org/), to generate graphics from code.
+
+# Standalone TikZ
+The [standalone package](https://ctan.org/pkg/standalone) for LaTeX is inteded as a way to put graphics such as those generated by TikZ into a standalone document to be included in other documents. We are going to use it to generate a pdf with the TikZ graphic.
+```latex
+% graphic.tex
+\documentclass[border=0pt, tikz]{standalone}
+
+\begin{document}
+  \begin{tikzpicture}
+  
+  \end{tikzpicture}
+\end{document}
+```
+
+To compile we simply run:
+```shell
+pdflatex graphic.tex
+```
+
+# Convert to SVG
+To convert this pdf into a svg file we are going to use the [pdf2svg](https://cityinthesky.co.uk/opensource/pdf2svg/) command-line converter:
+```shell
+pdf2svg graphic.tex
+```
+Et voilà! We produced an svg file from TikZ Source Code.
+
+# Quick and Easy
+Consider the following script for quick compilation:
+```bash
+#!/bin/bash
+
+# check for input file
+input="$1"
+
+if [ -z "$input" ]; then
+  echo "Usage: $0 <input>"
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+if [ ! -f "$1.tex" ]; then
+  echo "File not found: $1.tex"
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+# compile
+echo "Compiling $1.tex..."
+pdflatex -interaction=batchmode "$1.tex" > /dev/null
+
+if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
+  echo "Error: pdflatex failed!"
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+echo "Converting to $1.svg..."
+pdf2svg "$1.pdf" "$1.svg"
+
+echo "Done!"
+
+# cleanup
+rm "$1.aux" "$1.log"
+```