Convert xypic matrix to eps. (LaTeX) - latex

Question

I have a lot of BIG xypic-matrices in my LaTeX file for one of my papers, and it takes long/infinite time to compile. Is there a way to convert just the separate xypic-pieces to eps files, that I include in my main document?
I suppose I use LaTeX to compile the xypic part, but then I will get an entire document, right?
(Can someone add the tag xypic to this question?)
Update: The solution I came up with was to have separate LaTeX documents for each xymatrix, and then use dvips -E to capture the figure. I created a script for Compiling + Create eps in Kile, the editor I use.

Answer 1

Use latex to compile, then a
dvips -E -o temp.eps temp.dvi
to make an eps out of it, then epscrop to make a small eps you can include later.

Answer 2

There are a few ways to run Latex on just a portion of a document; the most widely used is likely Emacs/Auctex's TeX-command-region (C-c C-r), which generates a temporary Latex file whose dvi/eps/pdf/whatever output is just that from the selected region.

Answer 3

You can use the preview package to only process your pictures. For example:
$ cat a.tex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\setlength\PreviewBorder{5pt}
\usepackage [arrow]{xy}
\begin{document}
\begin{preview}
\begin{xy}
(0,-20)="a", (0,0)="b"
\ar#{<.||} #<24mm> "a";"b"
\ar#^{<.||} #<16mm> "a";"b"
\ar#_{<.||} #<8mm> "a";"b"
\ar#0{<.||} "a";"b"
\ar#1{<.||} #<-8mm> "a";"b"
\ar#2{<.||} #<-16mm> "a";"b"
\ar#3{<.||} #<-24mm> "a";"b"
\end{xy}
\end{preview}
\end{document}
Then, when you run pdflatex, preview will generate a pdf with only the pictures in it. You can convert them to eps by ghostscript:
$ latex a
$ dvips -E -i -Pwww -o figure.000 a
or you can generate PNG images:
$ pdflatex a
$ gs -dNOPAUSE -r400 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -dTextAlphaBits=4 \
-sDEVICE=png16m -sOutputFile=figure.png -dBATCH a.pdf
Then, you can include the generated files in your document.