|  |  | 3 Command line options, auxiliary programs, and environment variables

# 3 Command line options, auxiliary programs, and environment variables

#### Ipe command line options

Ipe supports the following two options:

`-sheet` style sheet name
  Adds the designated style sheet to any newly created documents.
`-geom` WxH+X+Y
  Places the Ipe main windows at the desired position and size. (Note the slight difference with the standard Unix option `-geometry`).

In addition, you can specify the name of an Ipe file to open on the command line. Finally, Ipe also understands some standard X11 options on Unix (this is support built into the Qt library, see there for details).

#### ipetoipe: converting Ipe file formats

The auxiliary program ipetoipe converts between the different Ipe file formats:

      ipetoipe ( -xml | -pdf | -eps | -ps ) [ -export ] [ -noshading ] [-lastview ] infile outfile

For example, the command line syntax

      ipetoipe -pdf figure1.eps figure1.pdf

converts `figure1.eps` to PDF format.

When you use the `-export` flag, no Ipe markup is included in the resulting output file. Ipe will not be able to open a file created that way, so make sure you keep your original!

With the `-noshading` flag, the background of generated PDF pages will not be shaded.

With the `-lastview` flag, only the last view of each Ipe page will be created in PDF or Postscript format. This is often convenient to make handouts for slides.

#### ipetopng: converting to a bitmap

The auxiliary program ipetopng converts a page of the document to a bitmap in PNG format. (Of course the result contains no Ipe markup, so make sure you keep your original.) For instance, the following command line

      ipetopng 3 150.0 presentation.pdf pres3.png

converts page 3 of the Ipe document `presentation.pdf` to a bitmap, with resolution 150.0 pixels per inch.

#### figtoipe: Importing FIG figures

The auxiliary program figtoipe converts a figure in FIG format into an Ipe XML-file. This is useful if you used to make figures with Xfig before discovering Ipe, of if your co-authors made figures for your article with Xfig (converting them will have the added benefit of forcing your co-authors to learn to use Ipe). Finally, there are quite a number of programs that can export to FIG format, and figtoipe effectively turns that into the possibility of exporting to Ipe.

However, figtoipe is not quite complete. Most seriously, no attempt is made to represent FIG splines, FIG arc-boxes, and embedded images in FIG files. The drawing models of FIG and Ipe are also somewhat different, which makes it impossible to properly render some FIG files in Ipe. Ipe does not support depth ordering independent of grouping, pattern fill, and Postscript fonts. You may therefore have to edit the file after conversion.

#### pdftoipe: Importing Postscript and PDF

You can convert arbitrary Postscript or PDF files into Ipe documents, making them editable. The auxiliary program pdftoipe converts (pages from) a PDF file into an Ipe XML-file. (If your source is Postscript, you have to first convert it to PDF using Acrobat Distiller or ps2pdf.) Once converted to XML, the file can be opened from Ipe as usual.

The conversion process should handle any graphics in the PDF file fine, but doesn't do very well on text--Ipe's text model is just too different.

Note that pdftoipe is not part of the Ipe source distribution. You can download and build it separately.

#### environment variables

Ipe, ipetoipe, and ipetopng respect the following environment variables:

IPELATEXDIR
  the directory where Ipe runs Pdflatex.
IPEPDFLATEX
  the name of the Pdflatex executable. If Pdflatex is on your path, the value pdflatex is sufficient.
IPEDOCDIR
  the directory containing the Ipe documentation.
IPELANGDIR
  the directory containing user interface localization for Ipe. (No such localization exists yet.)
IPEFONTMAP
  the complete path of the font map, describing where Ipe can find the 14 standard PDF fonts.
IPEKEYSFILE
  the complete path of the XML file specifying the standard Ipe key assignment. You don't normally need to set this variable, as you can override the standard assignment using a file in your home directory.
IPEBROWSER
  the name of the HTML browser to be used to display the Ipe on-line manual.
IPELETPATH
  a list of directories where Ipe looks for ipelets. Directories are separated by `:' on Unix, and by `;' on Windows.
TEXINPUTS
  when running Pdflatex, Ipe prepends both the current directory (where Ipe was started) as the directory containing the current document to the TEXINPUTS environment variable.

|  |  | 3 Command line options, auxiliary programs, and environment variables