[Ipe-announce] Ipe 7.2.5 is out

[Otfried Cheong]

Ipe 7.2.5 is now available in source form, as a Windows binary, and as
a Mac OS X app on the Ipe homepage at http://ipe.otfried.org.

This release has rather many new features (and, as a consequence,
probably a few new bugs).   You can find details below, but let me point
out the major highlights:

 * I have replaced the rather limited PDF interpreter that was just
 powerful enough to understand the PDF code generated by Ipe text
 objects by an interpreter that can handle a large subset of the PDF
 standard.   This means that you can now use many packages that generate
 PDF instructions directly from Latex, such as pgf and tikz, graphicx,
 or tcolorbox (which you can use to make nice boxes around theorems and
 definitions like beamer does).   In particular, it is now allowed to
 use \includegraphics to read external documents (beware that you will
 need to set TEXINPUTS or copy the files into the Ipe latex directory).

PDF is a very complex standard and Ipe will never implement it fully.  I
am hoping to achieve sufficient coverage to support all of pgf/tikz one
day (if you find something that doesn't work, please file a bug report).
   I cannot promise that including arbitrary PDF files using
\includegraphics will always work (if it doesn't, that's not a bug - but
you can file a feature request for specific needs).  In particular,
including external documents that do not embed their own fonts will not
display correctly on screen (but the PDF files saved by Ipe work fine).

* You can copy and paste properties from one object to another to create
a uniform visual style (this was already in 7.2.4 but partially broken).

* Edit object and Edit group are now available to edit group objects
without having to manually ungroup and regroup them.

* Objects can be decorated with a surrounding frame, box, shadow, etc.  
The decoration resizes automatically with the object.

Enjoy,
  Otfried 

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Ipe 7.2.5 (2016-07-19) Bayreuth edition

 * The PDF interpreter for text objects has been improved to handle a
   much larger subset of PDF.  Using interesting PDF-generating latex
   packages is now supported and encouraged, including tikz, pgf, and
   tcolorbox.  This makes it easy to create boxes for theorems and the
   like in presentations, as the beamer package does.

 * The use of \includegraphics inside text objects is now supported.
   Since PDF is a very complex standard, some PDF features will not be
   displayed correctly on the screen (but will work correctly in Ipe's
   PDF output).  A few features cannot even be supported in the PDF
   output. 

 * luatex is now supported as an alternative to pdftex and xetex.  

 * New shear transformation mode.  Without axis set, it will use a
   horizontal line as the fixed line, otherwise your x-axis.

 * Groups can now be decorated using "decoration symbols".  Those
   should be a path (or a group of paths), and are automatically
   resized to fit the bounding box of the group.  You'll need to
   include a style sheet containing decoration symbols
   (e.g. "decorations.isy" from the distribution), then right click on
   a group to set a decoration.
 
 * Action "Edit object" can now be used to edit text inside a group
   object.  This is convenient, for instance, to edit graph vertices
   (which are most easily represented as a group consisting of a
   circle and a text object, or a mark and a text object).

 * Experimental recursive group edit implemented.  It keeps all state
   inside the Ipe document, so that you can save in the middle of a
   group edit (and autosave continues to work during the group edit).
   Group edit creates a new layer "EDIT GROUP", unpacks the group into
   this layer, and locks all other layers. "End group edit"
   automatically groups the elements again and returns the group to
   its original layer.

 * New action "set tangent direction" to set the axis to be tangent to
   a given circle (or ellipse) or arc.  Move mouse close to boundary
   of circle or circular arc and press Ctrl+F3.

 * Improvements for ink mode to make it more responsive, less
   memory-consuming, and display smoother strokes (thanks to Zhengdao
   Wang and Philipp Kindermann for contributing code).

 * Fixed missing shortcut for box mode.

 * Added "Apply properties" to object menus. Fixed bug that caused it
   to be applied to all objects (not just the selected ones).

 * When creating a path object, the current arrow size and shape is
   set, so that they can be used if an arrow is enabled later.

 * Snapping no longer occurs for objects in layers that are not
   visible (bug #88).

 * Text objects now keep their PDF representation as a separate
   XObject.  This implies that after changing the color of a text
   object, Latex needs to be run to see the change on screen. This
   should be automatic when automatic Latex run is enabled.

 * \ipesymbol is no longer supported - you can use tikz or pgf
   instead, or simply \includegraphics.

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