[Ipe-discuss] External formula editors

[Jan Hlavacek]

I have recently introduced a colleague of mine to IPE.  She likes it a
lot, and uses it often to create figures for a geometry class she
teaches.  However, she is not very familiar with LaTeX, and finds it
hard to type LaTeX formulas.  I am looking for a simple LaTeX math
cheat-sheet for her so she can quickly find how to do the most common
things, but I also have an idea for another solution. 

She uses IPE on Windows, and there is a windows program called TeXAide,
which is basically a microsoft style equation editor that creates LaTeX
equations.  You edit your equation in a GUI environment, and then you
cut and paste it to a LaTeX file in a text editor.  I tried it and it
works pretty well with IPE, but it still is quite a bit of pain: 
you have to start TeXAide, create your equation, cut it, switch to IPE,
create a text object, and paste the equation into the text object
dialog.  Not a lot of work, but it gets tiresome when you have to do it
all the time.

I think it would be nice if there was a way to hook applications like
that to IPE, so that you would have a new button on a toolbar, that
would allow you to launch such application directly from IPE, and
automatically include the created latex equation in the drawing.  

Another idea would be to borrow the equation editor from LyX, but that
would be much more of a long time solution.  I actually like that
editor, I think it is much better than the one in microsoft products. 
How hard would it be to incorporate that into IPE?

I think both ideas could be done as ipelets, except that I am not sure
if an ipelet can have a button on a toolbar.

-- 
Jan Hlavacek, instructor
Department of Mathematics
Saginaw Valley State University
989-964-2004