Postsctipt arrows

[Andrew Bernard]

Greetings list,

I want to make many different types of arrows using PostScript. The following function from the Adobe Blue Book works very nicely for what I need. It’s quite general.

The question is, how do I incorporate something of this level of complexity this into a form where it can be invoked with \postscript in a \markup block?

%!PS-Adobe-3.0

/arrowdict 14 dict def arrowdict begin

/mtrx matrix def end

/arrow

{ arrowdict begin

/headlength exch def /halfheadthickness exch 2 div def /halfthickness exch 2 div def

/tipy exch def /tipx exch def

/taily exch def /tailx exch def

/dx tipx tailx sub def

/dy tipy taily sub def

/arrowlength dx dx mul dy dy mul add

sqrt def

/angle dy dx atan def

/base arrowlength headlength sub def

/savematrix mtrx currentmatrix def

tailx taily translate angle rotate

0 halfthickness neg moveto

base halfthickness neg lineto base halfheadthickness neg lineto arrowlength 0 lineto

base halfheadthickness lineto base halfthickness lineto

0 halfthickness lineto

closepath

savematrix setmatrix end

} def

An example of use in raw PostScript:

newpath

318 340 72 340 10 30 72 arrow

fill

Andrew