[texhax] graphics in LaTeX

[Pierre MacKay]

One approach to getting something useful out of the Gargantuan heaps
of spaghetti that MS Word includes around even the most simple graphics,
is to get OpenOffice, (My version is 1.0.1) bring the document up in that
then select the graphic element, such as an excel chart, and "copy" it in
the edit sub menu.  Then open a Presentation window through the Autopilot,
choose the simplest of all forms, and paste the contents of the cut buffer
onto that.  You now have a PS file, usually in vectored PostScript.  Nice
and compact.  You may still want to refine it, and GIMP may help here,
but I fall back on Adobe Illustrator to break out layers and to convert
to EPS.  ---  PLEASE, will some genius make Illustrator run in Wine, or
even better, emulate it in the GNU environment.  

Pierre MacKay.