[Ipe-discuss] a comment, and a problem with pdf to xml conversion (pdftoipe)

[Otfried Cheong]

 > I've been using Ipe 5 for a while, and I was very happy to discover
 > version 6!  I think v6 is a great improvement, with only one
 > exception: the amount of clicking necessary has increased!  I very
 > much liked the brevity (keyboard) of v5.  I read somewhere on the
 > mailing list about "multi-key sequences" and necessary
 > modifications to the source.  Will this make it into a future
 > version?  

Don't forget that you are still using a preview of Ipe 6.  Certainly
keyboard shortcuts will be available for all functions where it makes
sense in the release version.

The discussion was about customizable shortcuts.  The next preview
will make use of Qt's QKeySequence class when compiling with Qt 3.

It turns out, though, that while this class was introduced in Qt 3.0,
that version doesn't support multi-key sequences (in other words, the
API is there, by it doesn't do anything).  It should work correctly as
I described if Ipe is compiled with Qt 3.1 or higher.

(And yes, the source changes will be in the next preview.)

 > Now to a problem.  I have a small PS file, showing a histogram of
 > some data.  I convert it PDF using Acrobat distiller.  I verify
 > that the .ps and .pdf files look the same.  I try opening the PDF
 > file with Ipe and I get "Error loading document h.pdf".  Then I run
 > pdftoipe by hand on "h.pdf", to make "h.xml". Ipe has no problem
 > opening "h.xml".  However, the labels on the x-axis, which are 0,
 > 0.1, 0.2, etc, appear all as a single text object.

I would need to see the PDF file to fix this problem.  But working on
pdftoipe has somewhat low priority at this stage, so I suggest you
send me this PDF file in a few weeks.

Cheers,
  Otfried