[Ipe-discuss] Adding arcs with LUA in an Ipelet

[Lluís Alemany-Puig]

Hello everybody,

I'm writing an Ipelet to automatize arc drawing between pairs of points 
whose coordinates are known, but I'm not sure how to do that. I've made 
an ipelet before, but it is much simpler than this one.

The arcs I want to draw have well-defined right and left endpoints, and 
I would like to draw them as a semicircle whose centre is the midpoint 
between the left and right endpoints -- much like what one would get by 
using the buttons accessible via the default keyboard shortcut [A] and 
[Shift + A]: Circular arcs by centre, right and left points.

Looking at the documentation in the manual 
(http://ipe.otfried.org/manual/index.html) and at other ipelets I came 
up with this first approximation to add an arc:

     r = 20
     cx = 500
     cy = 450
     x1 = ipe.Vector(450,450)
     x2 = ipe.Vector(450,550)
     arc = ipe.Arc(ipe.Matrix(r, 0, 0, r, cx, cy), x1,x2)
     arc_seg = {type="arc", x1, x2, arc = arc}
     curve = {type="curve", closed = false, arc_seg}
     path = ipe.Path(model.attributes, {curve})
     model:creation("ACTION", path)

There are several things in this code that I do not understand, and that 
I could not find in the manual. First, I would like to know the meaning 
of the variables cx, cy, x1 and x2 and how to interpret the matrix 
ipe.Matrix(r, 0, 0, r, cx, cy) in terms of arc creation. I wonder how I 
can add the arcs I want with ipe.Arc(): how do I specify the left and 
right endpoints and the centre? The code above does not add an arc with 
left endpoint x1, right point x2 and centre (cx,cy). Actually, it 
produces something "weird"; sorry, I can't add a picture. In case it 
should, am I missing something?

These questions are, quite likely, more related to computational 
geometry than to IPE itself, but it's been too long since I last did a 
course on Computational Geometry (and I don't remember doing any of this).

Thank you all for your time,

Lluís.