Re: Transparency and pdftoipe

On 02/21/2011 04:00 AM, Arvind Ajoy wrote:
> At present, I am trying to include some pdfs generated using sketch3D
> (http://www.frontiernet.net/~eugene.ressler/) into Ipe. Sketch3D uses
> Tikz and pdflatex to draw. It includes support for transparency. Some
> examples of sketch3D output are available at
> http://www.fauskes.net/nb/introduction-to-sketch/. However, when I
> convert the pdf to ipe using pdftoipe, I find that information
> regarding transparency gets lost.

pdftoipe is a very limited tool, and does not support transparency.  (I 
think when it was first written transparency did not yet exist in PDF. 
Certainly long before Ipe had transparency.  pdftoipe has hardly changed 
since then.)

It would certainly be a nice project to add transparency to pdftoipe. 
In this case, however, I think it would actually be more useful to add 
an Ipe backend to sketch.   This should be quite easy, as sketch already 
has two backends, and Ipe can represent anything pstricks or TIKZ can 
represent easily.

Maybe I should start a list with useful projects to work on the Ipe wiki 
(and advertise it for undergraduates as graduation projects).

Cheers,
  Otfried