[Ipe-discuss] Save multiple .eps file for LaTeX animations

[Otfried Cheong]

Raphael Plasson wrote:
> ipe is quite useful to include animations in LaTeX presentation files.
> However, it seems that it is not possible to save multiple view ipe
> files in eps format. It would be very useful to have the opportunity to
> save such files into several eps files by a unique operation (e.g.
> saving a file with 3 views in eps files giving the name "test" would
> generate test-01.eps, test-02.eps and test-03.eps). As an example, I am
> giving at the end of the email the bash script that I am using to
> convert the ipe pdf into separates eps files.

This feature is already on my wish list for ipetoipe (and will be in Ipe 7).

> Moreover, it would be interesting that all these files share all the
> exact same cropping box, so that they can just be inserted in the LaTeX
> file in a succession of slides. If the cropbox option of the document is
> selected, the cropbox is set independently for each view, depending on
> the present objects in the view, which results in different sizes for
> each page. Unselecting the cropbox is not a solution, as the whole page
> is then set as the cropbox. The only solution is to add a white
> rectangle (rather than invisible, it is ignored by the cropbox if the
> color is set as void rather than white) where one wants the cropbox to
> be on a separate layer present on all views. What one would expect would
> be simply to obtain, for all the views, the cropbox that corresponds to
> a view that would show all the layers at the same time.

Indeed, it seems reasonable that the crop box for all the PDF pages 
stemming from the same Ipe page should be the same.  Are there any 
problems implementing it this way?

One related issue is that invisible objects are not used when 
calculating the crop box.  This is because it is sometimes useful to 
draw auxiliary lines (or other objects) for geometric constructions - 
you can then snap to these in your drawing - and of course these 
auxiliary objects should not be used to compute the crop box.  Any 
suggestions?

Otfried