GitHub - Foadsf/vintage-latex: Twenty LuaLaTeX and MetaPost (fiziko) examples of the old scientific-paper aesthetic: engraved plates, star charts, computed log tables, knots, telescopes

Vintage scientific papers with LaTeX Twenty small examples show independent mechanisms behind a convincing old-scientific-paper aesthetic. Each file is deliberately standalone: copy one, compile it, and remove individual effects to see what they contribute. The examples fall into three groups: pure LaTeX pages (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10 to 14), standalone fiziko MetaPost figures (3, 7, 8, 9), and LaTeX pages with fiziko figures drawn inside them by LuaTeX's built-in MetaPost (15 to 20). Gallery Low-resolution previews of the compiled output; the PDFs themselves are vector and searchable. 01 early modern page 02 engraved optics plate 03 Hooke apparatus 04 ornamented incipit 05 Victorian newspaper 06 natural history catalogue 07 lens rays 08 Atwood machine 09 shading atlas 10 table of logarithms 11 circumpolar star chart 12 snow-crystal micrographs 13 cooling curve 14 patent drawing sheet 15 inclined plane 16 telescope plate 17 terrestrial globe 18 mechanics primer 19 knots plate 20 phases of the moon 01-early-modern-page.tex -- OpenType old-style figures and historical ligatures, an explicit long s, warm paper and ink colors, asymmetric margins, a drop capital, spaced small capitals, marginalia, and printer's rules. 02-engraved-optics-plate.tex -- deterministic irregular strokes and line hatching in TikZ, with labels kept as real searchable text. 03-fiziko-hooke-apparatus.mp -- a compact Hooke apparatus drawn with the external fiziko MetaPost library: hatched support, modeled spring, hanging weight, and measured extension. 04-ornamented-incipit.tex -- an A5 early-scientific title page with a boxed three-line initial and a small vector ornament made from ordinary TikZ paths. 05-victorian-newspaper.tex -- a compact square broadsheet with a masthead, balanced columns, rule between columns, pull quotation, article heads, and meteorological register. 06-natural-history-catalogue.tex -- a museum catalogue page using hanging entries, dot leaders, explicit typographic roles, and old-style numeric data. 07-fiziko-lens-rays.mp -- a glass lens whose ray paths are computed by fiziko's refraction macro rather than drawn to a predetermined focal point. 08-fiziko-atwood-machine.mp -- an Atwood machine composed from a hatched support, shaded pulley, curved rope, hanging weights, and acceleration arrow. 09-fiziko-shading-atlas.mp -- a side-by-side comparison of line shading, stippling, and a variable-width shaded tube. 10-lua-table-of-logarithms.tex -- a five-place table of logarithms whose every digit is computed by a Lua function at compile time, set in lining tabular figures with the ruling of a nineteenth-century table. 11-circumpolar-star-chart.tex -- a polar star chart: one macro converts right ascension and declination to chart coordinates for thirty-four catalogued stars, hour circles lettered in roman numerals, and magnitude-graded discs. 12-snow-crystal-micrographs.tex -- four circular microscope fields; the crystals are grown by TikZ Lindenmayer-system grammars, with six rotated copies of one arm supplying the hexagonal symmetry. 13-cooling-curve-graph-paper.tex -- a pgfplots chart on sepia graph paper with inward ticks, open-circle plotting symbols, a hand-fitted curve, and an italic marginal remark. 14-patent-drawing-sheet.tex -- a patent-office plate of a centrifugal governor: numbered leader lines, sections hatched at forty-five degrees, engraved balls, and witness and inventor signature lines. 15-fiziko-inclined-plane.tex -- a treatise page whose figure is drawn by fiziko inside LuaLaTeX: a wooden wedge, a shaded ball, and the weight resolved along and normal to the slope, with labels set in the page's own text and math fonts. 16-fiziko-telescope-plate.tex -- a Keplerian telescope in which every ray is refracted by fiziko's tracing macro; the focus and the exit pupil, where the eye is placed, are found where computed rays cross the axis. 17-fiziko-terrestrial-globe.tex -- the earth from three stations using fiziko's globe with its built-in coastlines, plus a border row of small globes turned by equal steps. 18-fiziko-mechanics-primer.tex -- a two-column chapter with a loaded cart, a lever in balance, and a pendulum, each drawn in place in its column. 19-fiziko-knots-plate.tex -- trefoil, cinquefoil, and septafoil cords from one formula each, with fiziko finding the crossings and shading the rope. 20-fiziko-phases-of-the-moon.tex -- the moon in eight orbital positions under one fixed light, and the same eight phases as seen from the earth by turning the light about a fixed sphere. The .tex files compile independently with LuaLaTeX. The .mp files are standalone MetaPost sources with fiziko as an explicit external dependency. Examples 15 to 20 need both: they are LuaLaTeX documents that load fiziko through luamplib. Build The quickest route is the script for your shell, run from the repository root. Both compile every example into build/ and skip the fiziko examples unless a fiziko checkout is given: .\build.ps1 -Fiziko ..\fiziko # PowerShell 7 ./build.sh ../fiziko # POSIX shell Append example names to build only those. The sections below spell out the same commands by hand. Requirements: LuaLaTeX (TeX Live or MiKTeX); the LaTeX packages fontspec, geometry, microtype, multicol, xcolor, tikz (with its lindenmayersystems, patterns.meta, calc, and shapes.geometric libraries), pgfplots, luacode, and array; EB Garamond (the ebgaramond package in TeX Live and MiKTeX). From the repository root, create an output directory and compile all pure-LaTeX examples: # PowerShell 7 on Windows New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force build | Out-Null $names = @( '01-early-modern-page', '02-engraved-optics-plate', '04-ornamented-incipit', '05-victorian-newspaper', '06-natural-history-catalogue', '10-lua-table-of-logarithms', '11-circumpolar-star-chart', '12-snow-crystal-micrographs', '13-cooling-curve-graph-paper', '14-patent-drawing-sheet' ) foreach ($name in $names) { lualatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error ` -output-directory=build "examples/$name.tex" } # POSIX shell on Linux or macOS mkdir -p build for name in \ 01-early-modern-page \ 02-engraved-optics-plate \ 04-ornamented-incipit \ 05-victorian-newspaper \ 06-natural-history-catalogue \ 10-lua-table-of-logarithms \ 11-circumpolar-star-chart \ 12-snow-crystal-micrographs \ 13-cooling-curve-graph-paper \ 14-patent-drawing-sheet do lualatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error \ -output-directory=build "examples/$name.tex" done The source files intentionally reject pdfLaTeX. That engine cannot provide the OpenType controls demonstrated here. Build the fiziko examples Clone fiziko separately; it is not vendored or relicensed here: git clone https://github.com/jemmybutton/fiziko.git ../fiziko MetaPost finds fiziko.mp through MPINPUTS. Preserve the trailing path separator so the normal MetaPost search path remains available. # PowerShell 7 on Windows $env:MPINPUTS = "$((Resolve-Path ../fiziko).Path);" New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force build | Out-Null $names = @( '03-fiziko-hooke-apparatus', '07-fiziko-lens-rays', '08-fiziko-atwood-machine', '09-fiziko-shading-atlas' ) foreach ($name in $names) { # -job-name is required by MiKTeX's mpost; omit it on TeX Live (see below). mpost -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error ` -job-name=$name -output-directory=build "examples/$name.mp" } # POSIX shell on Linux or macOS export MPINPUTS="$(cd ../fiziko && pwd):" mkdir -p build for name in \ 03-fiziko-hooke-apparatus \ 07-fiziko-lens-rays \ 08-fiziko-atwood-machine \ 09-fiziko-shading-atlas do # Run from inside build/: TeX Live's mpost cannot read the mpx file its # btex step writes when -output-directory is used. (cd build && mpost -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error \ "../examples/$name.mp") done Each result is named build/<example-name>-1.eps. The two distributions disagree about the job-name flag: MiKTeX's mpost (3.00, checked September 2026) crashes with an access violation at the first btex label unless -job-name=<name> is given, while TeX Live's mpost rejects that spelling and needs no flag at all because the job name defaults to the file's basename. build.ps1 detects MiKTeX and adds the flag; build.sh never does. Convert the EPS files to PDF or PNG with Ghostscript; do not request PDF directly from MetaPost without checking the file signature. Every source uses prologues := 3 so labels are embedded and the output carries an EPSF header. Build the LaTeX pages with fiziko inside them Examples 15 to 20 additionally need: the luamplib package, which runs MetaPost inside LuaTeX; unicode-math and the garamond-math package, so that the mathematical labels on the figures match EB Garamond. luamplib finds fiziko.mp through the same MPINPUTS variable as above, so set it before running LuaLaTeX: # PowerShell 7 on Windows $env:MPINPUTS = "$((Resolve-Path ../fiziko).Path);" New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force build | Out-Null $names = @( '15-fiziko-inclined-plane', '16-fiziko-telescope-plate', '17-fiziko-terrestrial-globe', '18-fiziko-mechanics-primer', '19-fiziko-knots-plate', '20-fiziko-phases-of-the-moon' ) foreach ($name in $names) { lualatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error ` -output-directory=build "examples/$name.tex" } # POSIX shell on Linux or macOS export MPINPUTS="$(cd ../fiziko && pwd):" mkdir -p build for name in \ 15-fiziko-inclined-plane \ 16-fiziko-telescope-plate \ 17-fiziko-terrestrial-globe \ 18-fiziko-mechanics-primer \ 19-fiziko-knots-plate \ 20-fiziko-phases-of-the-moon do lualatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error \ -output-directory=build "examples/$name.tex" done These pages share one pattern. \everymplib inputs fiziko.mp, fixes the random seed, sets the stroke width and light direction, and tints all strokes with the page's ink colour through drawoptions; each figure is then an ordinary mplibcode environment placed where it belongs in the text. 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