On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 03:12:12PM +0200, Bertrand Haut wrote:

Hello,

I've just discover inkscape (trying to escape from xfig), It's great but I still have two suggestions :

• the possibility to adapt only some of the properties in the Fill and Stroke

window. I've two curves : solid and dashed. I select the two curves, adapt the width, press enter. The two curves have now the same width (Good) but the dashed is now solid (Bad). It would be great if only the properties that have been modified by the user where adapted.

Yes, this needs some improvement; there are some other related issues such as if you wish to cut the transparency of all selected items by 33% or so forth.

• The most important thing for a graphic editor is the facility to insert the

result in LaTeX (ok, it's a personal opinion). It is already possible to save as "LaTeX with PSTricks macros" but with this option it is not possible to include LaTex code (such as $\frac{a}{b}$) as text in Inkscape and have it interpreted by LaTeX.

The idea is to seperate the figure in two : on one side all the text objects and on the other side everything else. The rest is exported in an eps file. The text objects are inserted in a .tex file which includes the eps. Something like :

\begin{picture}(0,0)% \includegraphics{the_eps_file_with_everything_except_texts.eps}% \end{picture}% \begingroup \setlength{\unitlength}{0.02bp}% \begin{picture}(47600,21050)(0,0)% \put(11700,7000){\makebox(0,0)[c]{\strut{}The_first_text_object}}% \put(13200,9700){\makebox(0,0)[c]{\strut{}The_first_text_object}}% (...) \end{picture}% \endgroup \endinput

With this, the user has only to include a .tex file to have the graphics and all the text objects interpreted by LaTeX.

I assume this should not be too complicated. The export in eps is already done. It remains to access the position and the text of all text objects to write the .tex file.

There's also a latex formula extension. Probably doesn't do everything you need but might be worth looking at it.

Maybe I can work on this second suggestion. The question is where should this be done ? Inside inkscape or in a external program which work on any .svg file and use Inkscape to make the export in eps ?

Actually, a bit of both. Inkscape permits creating extensions in other languages that are called from outside the program. Look in /usr/share/inkscape/extensions/ for examples. Basically, you can write your own script, and an .inx file for it, and then inkscape can call it (no recompilation needed). I think you can use that mechanism for this.

Bryce