[Up] [Next]
Go up to General Concepts
Go forward to Order of objects

Ipe and Mipe modes

Ipe can operate in two slightly different modes. The first mode, simply called ipe mode, is used for preparing a single figure for inclusion into a LaTeX document. Such figures are stored in files with extension .ipe, which combines LaTeX and Postscript information as well as the keywords necessary for Ipe to be able to read back the file (this is the Integrated picture environment format which gave Ipe its name). Such a file is at the same time a legal Encapsulated Postscript file and a legal LaTeX file.

  The second mode is called mipe mode or multi page mode, and is meant for making slides. In this mode Ipe will display one page of a multiple page document. You can leaf through the pages using the page menu (or the corresponding keyboard shortcuts). A document of this type is stored in a file with extension .mipe. These files contain no LaTeX code and no Postscript information. They are not meant to be useful outside of the Ipe editor itself.   Page zero of the multi page document serves as a template. The information on this page is shown in a read-only mode when viewing any other page, and is printed on all pages. You should use page zero to create a suitable bounding box for your slides.

  Whenever you load a file, be it from the command line or using the find file function, Ipe determines the type of the file and goes into the corresponding mode. To start editing a new file, you should do a find file with a non-existing file name. In that case, Ipe determines the mode based on the file name suffix. When starting up Ipe without a file, you can also use a command line flag to force it into mipe mode.

  Note that the following Ipe variables can have two different values for ipe and for mipe mode: the list of legal font sizes (because text on slides tends to be much bigger than in figures), the LaTeX preamble for previewing and printing (because you will want to use the mipe document class for your slides), the preview command (because you might want to set different magnifications for slides and for figures), and the mark size and arrow size.

In this document we will usually talk about an Ipe drawing. In general, this can be the figure created or edited with Ipe in ipe mode, or it can be a single page of the multi-page document maintained in mipe mode. The only Ipe functions that have an effect beyond the current page are the functions preview all and print all and the functions in the page menu.

Page number zero of a multi-page document has a special function. It serves as a template for the whole document. This means that the contents of this page will be shown and printed on every page of the document. This can be used to put a bounding box around your slides, for company logos and the like. To create or edit the template, just edit page zero of the document, which is otherwise just a standard Ipe drawing.


[Up] [Next]