For blog posts and slides I normally embed Graphviz DOT directly in orgmode and let the export handle rendering. That works well until a paper schematic needs inline math or a font family that does not cover enough Unicode glyphs 1. At that point, TikZ in a standalone document class is the path of least resistance: full LaTeX math rendering, arbitrary fonts through the TeX ecosystem, and tightly cropped output without manual trimming.

The build script loops over every .tex in a directory, compiles to PDF via tectonic, then rasterizes with pdftoppm (poppler):

 1#!/usr/bin/env bash
 2set -euo pipefail
 3
 4TIKZDIR="v1/pccp/imgs/tikz"
 5OUTDIR="v1/pccp/imgs/tikz"
 6DPI="${DPI:-300}"
 7
 8for texfile in "${TIKZDIR}"/*.tex; do
 9    name="$(basename "${texfile}" .tex)"
10    echo "Building ${name}..."
11    tectonic "${texfile}" --outdir "${OUTDIR}"
12    pdftoppm -png -r "${DPI}" -singlefile \
13        "${OUTDIR}/${name}.pdf" "${OUTDIR}/${name}"
14    echo "  -> ${OUTDIR}/${name}.png"
15done

Wiring this into pixi keeps the dependencies pinned and the invocation trivial:

1[tasks]
2tikz-figs = { cmd = "bash v1/pccp/imgs/tikz/build_tikz.sh" }
3
4[feature.texbuild.dependencies]
5tectonic = "*"
6poppler = "*"
7
8[environments]
9texbuild = {features = ["texbuild"]}

Then pixi run -e texbuild tikz-figs rebuilds everything. Override the resolution with DPI=600 pixi run -e texbuild tikz-figs for print quality. The same figures can live as #+begin_export latex blocks in the orgmode paper source for native export, with the standalone PNGs serving as quick-reference copies or targets for non-TeX workflows.

  1. Jost, for instance, is wonderful for headings but lacks the math operators and Greek letters a pipeline diagram inevitably requires. ↩︎