[pstricks] How to do Braids with ps-tricks

[Michael Sharpe]

On Apr 26, 2010, at 9:42 AM, Felix Hoffmann wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am working on a diploma thesis in pure maths, which will need to display some braids (not the ones, which are already implemented in xyPic). They should look like that:
> 
> o    o     o
> |     |      |
> |     |      |
>  \  /        |
>   x         |
> /   \        |
> |      |       |
> o    o     o
> 
> But cool and not like the one I drew. I am always amazed from the things, that are possible with ps-tricks, I guess that there is a solution, but I don't know it yet. Of course it should be displayable which part of the braid is on top of the other and vice versa. Most appreciated would be a version, where I only tell the command which braid parts to change in what manner.

You could start with something like


\documentclass[dvips]{article}
\usepackage{pstricks}
\usepackage{pst-node}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\psset{angleA=-90,angleB=90,arrows=o-o}%
\begin{pspicture}(-.5,-.5)(6.5,6.5)
\pccurve(0,4)(1,0)
\pccurve[border=2pt](1,4)(0,0)
\pccurve(2,4)(2,0)
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}

but it might be better to use the psmatrix environment to contruct the ends of the braids.