[Ipe-discuss] Re: Feature request: Ruler

[Jan Hlavacek]

Otfried Cheong wrote:
 > It never occurred to me that someone might want to type coordinates
 > instead of clicking, but it should be easy to add.  But wouldn't this be
 > rather cumbersome to use?   It seems creating an object in a text editor
 > and then pasting it into Ipe would be more convenient, if you have
 > specific coordinates you want.

That's true, but you need to know the syntax.  Perhaps an ipelet that
takes currently selected objects, opens them in a text editor of your
choice, and lets you modify them would be good.  Say you need a specific
circle, so you create a random circle, select it, and edit it in an
editor.  It should also be pretty easy to implement.

That said, I always thought I would like to have a picture editor that
would follow a sort of vi-like style: completely keyboard driven, say
typing 12.3,3.4g would place the cursor to the points with coordinates
12.3 and 3.4, maybe +12.3,+3.4g would take you 12.3 and 3.4 units
relative to your current position, ma would mark current position as
"a", so you could refer to it as a in the future, 2.3,1.2mb would mark
the point 2.3 units, 1.2 units as "b", etc.  You could "search" for
points satisfying given conditions, maybe /x(l1)(c3) would take you to
an intersection of line l1 and circle c3, then pressing n would take you
to the other intersection, just like searching in vi.  You would have
commands for drawing different objects, selecting, transforming, erasing
etc. Then you could always do things like :circle(2.5, 4)(7) to draw a
specific circle, and so on.

I even have a name for such editor, I would call it "pi" :)

And while we are talking about wishes, one think I would like to see is
the ipe's ipelet api exported to some higher level interpreted language,
like python or ruby, so one could write ipelets in such language.

Anyway, now when I got to use the term "ipe's ipelet api" in a sentence,
I am happy.

-- 
Jan Hlavacek                                        Science West 359
Instructor of Mathematics                             (989) 964-2004
Saginaw Valley State University                                  ---