6.4 Decorations

A decoration is a symbol that can be used to decorate a group object. Its name must start with the string decoration/, and it should contain either a path object or a group of path objects.

Ipe resizes these path objects so that they fit nicely around the bounding box of the group object being decorated. For this to work correctly, the decoration object must be drawn such that it decorates the rectangle with corners at (100, 100) and (300, 200).

To make a decoration symbol, follow these steps:

• Draw a rectangle. Select Edit as XML from its context menu, and change the coordinates to look as follows:

  <path stroke="black" fill="lightblue">
  100 100 m
  300 100 l
  300 200 l
  100 200 l
  h
  </path>
  

• Draw your decoration so that it fits this rectangle. You should draw only path objects.
• Delete the rectangle from the first step.
• If the decoration consists of more than one object, group them all together.
• Save this object as a symbol whose name starts with decoration/ (including the slash). You can do this either using create new symbol in the symbols ipelet, or by selecting Edit as XML from the object's context menu and copying the code into a stylesheet open in your text editor.

For inspiration, have a look at the decoration symbols in the stylesheet decorations.isy that comes with Ipe.