LaTeX has a standard package for graphics inclusion, rotation, colour, and other driver-related features. The package is documented in the second edition of Lamport's LaTeX book, as well as in the LaTeX Graphics Companion (see TeX-related books). The LaTeX package is also available in a form suitable for use with Plain TeX.
The distribution itself comes with documentation, and a processed copy (grfguide.ps) is available in the distribution so that users can read documentation without first installing the package.
The graphics package comes with a relative,
graphicx, which provides more convenient means of scaling
and otherwise manipulating graphics. The packages are usually
configured to the DVI processor you use by means of a .cfg
file, but configuration by means of package options is also possible.
The range of types of graphical file you may include differs according
to the system you're using.
The figures themselves do not become part of the DVI file, but
are only included when you use a DVI
to PostScript conversion program. The
\special
commands
used to pass pointers to the graphics files, and other information,
are potentially different for every DVI processor
(which is why the graphics package must be configured for
the processor you use).
Since the \special
commands used are typically not their own, some
DVI previewers can't cope with them. More modern ones (notably
xdvi, MikTeX's yap and fpTeX's
windvi) can pass the figure to a properly configured
ghostcript installation for rendering into a bitmap for
screen viewing.
There are two rather good documents on CTAN addressing figure production, with rather different emphasis. Keith Reckdahl's epslatex covers the standard LaTeX facilities, as well as some of the supporting packages, notably subfigure and psfrag. Anil K. Goel's "Figures in LaTeX" (figsinltx), covers the different ways in which you might generate figures, and the old (LaTeX 2.09) ways of including them into documents.
graphicx.sty
)
is found in macros/latex/required/graphics.tar.gz; to use the packages with Plain
TeX, you should also acquire: