[Ipe-discuss] External formula editors

[Otfried Cheong]

Jan Hlavacek wrote:
> 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.

A slight shortcut is possible:  Create your formula with TeXAide, then 
press Ctrl+A Ctrl+C (select all, and copy to clipboard).  Switch to Ipe, 
and press Ctrl+V.  Ipe will automatically create a text object, and  place
it in the middle of the canvas - you only have to move it into the  right
position.  This isn't too bad, I guess, considering how much mouse  work
it takes to assemble an equation in the editor anyway...

Note that you have to start TeXAide only once - just keep it running for 
the entire Ipe session.  You have to set the "Format" to "Inline
Equation" in TeXAide for the formula to work in Ipe (again this needs to 
be done only once for an Ipe session).

> 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.

It doesn't seem that TeXAide exposes any interface that Ipe could use to 
make this more easy.  Well, one could try to send key presses to
TeXAide, but that doesn't seem to help too much.

> 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?

This would be an interesting project, but is probably quite a bit of 
work.  It should definitely be done (by someone else) as an ipelet.  Ipe 
probably doesn't expose all the necessary interfaces yet, but I'd be 
happy to add those.

Otfried