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X Resources

The X resources are used to customize the behavior of Ipe. They also provide essential information about the system Ipe is running on. Since Ipe is designed to be binary-compatible on a given architecture, such information is not compiled into the executable, and Ipe needs the X resources to figure out where to find certain files and how to access LaTeX or dvips.

You typically specify your X resources in a file .Xdefaults or .Xresources in you home directory. But note that you have to run xrdb and to restart Ipe to see your modifications take effect.

These are the most important X resources known to Ipe--there are many more that are interpreted by the Motif user interface, and which you can find in Ipe's application defaults file.

*mipeMode
determines whether Ipe starts up in "ipe mode" (a single page figure) or in "mipe mode" (with a document of several pages).
*ghostscriptName
The full pathname of the Ghostscript Postscript interpreter. It is called by Ipe with an execl call.
*dvipsCommand
The command that Ipe will issue to convert the DVI-file ipe_pages.dvi into a Postscript file %s.
*latexCommand
The command that Ipe will issue to start LaTeX. (No pathname is necessary, so it is very unlikely that this is going to be different from latex.)
*tmpDirectory
The directory where Ipe creates the temporary files needed to run LaTeX and dvips, to edit properties, and to call Ipe user macros.

 

*helpCommand
This is the command string used by Ipe to start the help system. Normally, this should start up a HTML reader such as Mosaic on the file Ipe.html. But if you don't have a HTML reader or don't like reading the HTML documentation, you could also call a DVI or Postscript previewer to view the DVI or Postscript version of the Ipe manual.

 

*iumDirectories
specifies directories where Ipe can find Ipe user macros, separated by a colon. The directories will be searched in the given order.
*printCommand
The default print command.
*mipePreviewCommand and *ipePreviewCommand
The default preview commands. Whenever you load a file, the correct command will be placed into the box in the configuration panel.

 

*mipePreamble and *ipePreamble
The LaTeX preamble. It is saved with the figure when you write a file. The default here is only used when creating new files.
*psPreamble
The default Postscript preamble .
*color1, *color2, ..., *color14
When preparing an Ipe drawing, you can select from 16 colors in the color panel. (But you can load figures containing different colors, or use edit properties to generate colors not in the color panel.)

Colors 0 and 15 are always black and white, and the remaining 14 colors can be specified in any way that your X system supports.

*strokeColor and *fillColor
The default stroke and fill colors. Give an index into the color panel, that is a number between 0 and 15 (or index 16 to specify the empty color).
*mipeFontsizes and *ipeFontsizes
The list of available fontsizes.
*ipeFont and *mipeFont
The default font when starting Ipe. The argument is 1, 2, 3, or 4, for roman, italic, bold, and math.
*ipeFontsize and *mipeFontsize
The default fontsize. The argument should be an index into the list specified with IpeFontsizes or MipeFontsizes, starting with 1.
*romanFontGL, *italicFontGL, *boldFontGL, and *mathFontGL
Using these keywords, you can specify how the GL version of Ipe will represent these fonts on the screen. The argument must be a font name known to the SGI fontmanager.
*editRomanFontGL, *editItalicFontGL, *editBoldFontGL, and *editMathFontGL
When creating or editing a text object, these fonts are used on the screen. Most people prefer to use a fixed-width font for editing.
*romanFontX,
*italicFontX, *boldFontX, *mathFontX, *editRomanFontX, *editItalicFontX, *editBoldFontX, and *editMathFontX These fonts are used by the pure X version of Ipe. The argument must be a X font declaration with enough wildcards to match a whole range of sizes. Ipe will select the font size closest to the LaTeX font size (but scaled with fontScale or editFontScale).
*fontScale and *editFontScale
determine the size of the screen fonts. The LaTeX font size is multiplied with this factor before looking up a GL or X font.
*selectionColor,
*creationColor, *editColor, *moveColor, *panColor, *dragColor, *axisColor, *gridColor, *canvasBackground Using these keywords, you can specify the colors that Ipe will use to represent concepts like "moving", the current selection and so on.
*linestyleList
A list of the line styles known to Ipe. Specify as a list of 16 bit integers in hexadecimal.
*lineWidthList
The list of line widths known to Ipe.
*lineStyle and *lineWidth
The default line style and line width. The argument is an index into the lists specified with LineStyleList and LineWidthList, starting with 1.
*arrowType
The default setting for arrows. This is a number from 0 to 3. Bit 0 indicates the "from"-arrow, bit 1 the "to"-arrow.
*circleVariant, *arcVariant, and *markVariant
The argument to these keywords specifies the default variety of the circle, arc, and mark object.
*deltaAlphaList
List of snap angles (floating point numbers in degrees) known to Ipe.
*deltaAlpha
The default snap angle. The argument is an index into the list specified with DeltaAlphaList.
*gridSizeList
List of grid sizes known to Ipe.
*gridSize
The default grid size. The argument is an index into the list specified with GridSizeList.
*snapSelf
Default setting (True or False) of the snap self button in the Snap field.
*ipeArrowSize and *mipeArrowSize
The default size of arrows.
*ipeMarkSize and *mipeMarkSize
The default size of marks.
*enableUndo,
*enableLatexBox, *enableFifi, *enableInterior, *enableZoomPan, *enableStroke, and *enable3Spline The default settings of the buttons in the configuration panel. True for on, False for off.
*selectDistance and *snapDistance
The distance on the screen within which you have to click to select an object or where you have to move to feel the magnetic attraction of an object's feature. The value given here sets the starting value for the slider in the configuration panel.
*gridVisible
specifies whether the grid is visible when Ipe starts up.
*showShortcuts
If True, Ipe will show you the keyboard shortcuts for the menu entries in the menu.
*makeBackups
When this is True and you are saving a drawing in a file which already exists, Ipe will rename the existing file file.ipe into file.ipe~ before saving.

 

*undoLimit
When editing large figures the Undo mechanism eats up lots of space and slows down operation. Therefore it is useful to turn off the Undo memory when working on a large figure. (It is virtually impossible to create such a figure from within Ipe. But when working on a figure that has been imported from Postscript or has been computed in Ipe format by a program, the limit is reached quite easily.) Every time that Ipe loads a file it tests whether the current page needs more than UndoLimit space, and, if so, the Undo mechanism is automatically turned off. The threshold is specified in Kilo Bytes.
*splinePrecision
The argument to this keyword determines the precision of the internal approximation of splines and splinegons. It is used for drawing splines and when snapping to splines (but note that a point that is snapped on a spline lies exactly on the spline, no matter what the precision is).

 

*ipeSystemMacros and *ipeUserMacros
These two resources are used to tell Ipe about Ipe user macros and Ipe user objects. *ipeSystemMacros is set in the application defaults file by the system administrator to contain a set of system-wide Ipe user macros, while *ipeUserMacros is left empty for the user to add her own macros. Otherwise, there is no difference between the two resources.

The contents of these resources is a long string (you can specify an arbitrarily long string in your .Xdefaults file by escaping the end of line with a backslash). The string is partitioned into Ium descriptions using semicolons. Every Ium description consists of a set of words separated by white space. The first word is the name of a file, and must have extension either .ipe or .ium. The second word is the "name" of the Ipe user macro--this is the string that will be displayed above the canvas when the operation is executed. Underscores in the name will be converted into spaces.

If the file name has the extension .ipe, Ipe will assume that this is an Ipe file containing a figure. When the operation is executed, the object in the file is inserted (as a single group). You can use this to include your favorite objects with a single key stroke. The file will be looked up in the directories given in the *iumDirectories resource.

If the file name has extension .ium, Ipe assumes the this is an executable. Again, ipe will search for this executable in the directories specified with the *iumDirectories resource.

The remaining words are flags as follows:

-menu num
put the Ipe user macro into menu number num. The menus are numbered from left to right, number 1 is the file menu, and menus 6 and 7 are solely for Ipe user macros.
-sep
(in connection with -menu) puts a separator--a horizontal line--into the menu.
-arg string
when calling the ium, pass the string as the second argument. This can be used to pack more than one function into an executable, or to trigger debug flags and the like. When this flag is not used, the string "0" is passed.
-key keys
specifies a keyboard shortcut. Use the standard Emacs notation that Ipe uses itself. You can use shortcuts prefixed with C-x or C-c, by putting an underscore between the prefix and the second character.
-norawbits
do not send raw bitmaps to the Ium.
-nodata
create an interface file with no data. It still contains the current Ipe settings.
-nofile
don't create an interface file. Use this whenever your Ium doesn't care about the current selection or the current Ipe settings. Many functions for importing foreign formats use this.
-input prompt
prompt user for a string, using the prompt. The string is passed to the Ium as its third argument.
-file prompt
prompt user for a file name. A file browser is popped up, and the user can select a file by browsing the file system. The file name is passed as the Ium's third argument. Note that only one of -input or -file can be used.
-persist key
make the additional parameter declared by -input or -file persistent with key key. This means that a default value is obtained from the .iumrc file, and the value there is replaced with the user's input. An Ipe user macro can set this default using iumrc_put.

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