The unknown picture environment
Claudio Beccari · 2012
The old picture environment, introduced by Leslie Lamport into the L ATEX kernel almost 20 years ago, appears to be neglected in favor of more modern and powerful L ATEX packages that eliminate all drawbacks of the original environment. Nevertheless it is still being used behind the scenes by a number of other packages. Lamport announced an extension in 1994 that should have removed all the limitations of the original environment; in 2003 the first version of this extension appeared; in 2004 the first stable version was released; in 2009 it was actually expanded with new functionality. Nowadays the picture environment can perform like most simple drawing programs, but it has special features that make it invaluable.