#TikZ #diagramming_software TikZ is a powerful and widely-used package for creating graphics and diagrams in LaTeX. It stands for "TikZ ist kein Zeichenprogramm," which translates to "TikZ is not a drawing program" in English. TikZ allows you to create complex and high-quality graphics directly within your LaTeX documents, providing precise control over every aspect of your diagrams. Here are some key features and concepts of TikZ: 1. **Drawing Capabilities**: TikZ provides a wide range of drawing capabilities, including lines, curves, shapes, arrows, text, and more. You can specify coordinates, control points, and paths to create intricate shapes and designs. 2. **Nodes**: Nodes in TikZ are used to represent elements in your diagrams. You can add nodes with specific shapes, styles, labels, and positions. Nodes can be connected with edges or arrows to form relationships between elements. 3. **Styles and Options**: TikZ allows you to define your own styles and customize various aspects of your graphics. You can specify line styles, fill colors, text formatting, arrow types, and much more. These styles can be applied globally or selectively to specific elements. 4. **Coordinate System**: TikZ provides a flexible coordinate system for positioning elements within your diagrams. You can use Cartesian coordinates, polar coordinates, relative coordinates, or even specify positions using named anchors. 5. **Control Structures**: TikZ supports control structures like loops and conditionals, enabling you to create repetitive or conditional graphical elements. This feature is particularly useful when drawing complex patterns or repetitive structures. 6. **Integration with LaTeX**: TikZ seamlessly integrates with LaTeX, allowing you to incorporate your diagrams directly into your LaTeX documents. This ensures consistent fonts, sizes, and styling between your text and graphics. 7. **TikZ Libraries**: TikZ offers a rich collection of libraries that provide additional functionality and pre-defined shapes. These libraries cover topics such as graphs, automata, trees, circuits, and more. You can easily include these libraries in your TikZ code to extend the capabilities of your diagrams. TikZ is a comprehensive package with extensive documentation. The official TikZ documentation provides detailed explanations, tutorials, examples, and a comprehensive reference manual. Additionally, there are numerous online resources, forums, and communities where you can find help, examples, and inspiration for using [[TikZ]] in your [[LaTeX]] documents. It is particularly popular to have [[Category theory|category theorists]] encode their diagrams in the [[TikZ]] syntax. ## Web Browser Support in TikZJaX There is a web-based solution to display TikZ diagrams, that is [[TikZJaX]], which has a [[Obsidian plugin]]. Please also look at [[TikZ-CD]].