Stephan Lehmke writes:
> I'm just wondering about
> one thing: You're overlaying all previous pictures
> on every subsequent slide, so the pictures have to
> appear `transparent', otherwise the last one would
> `overwrite' all the previous ones.
This strategy is enforced by Xfig. If you have something in an upper
level, that obscures the lower levels, you will see that in Xfig and
better change your figure.
> Maybe it would be more safe and efficient to organize
> the sequence of pictures such that every subsequent
> mpost file contains everything from the previous ones?
First I cannot see that it is more safe, because you see the result
already in Xfig.
Second I don't know what measure of efficiency you want to apply.
With respect to output file size the current strategy is optimal for
PPower4 :-), because each slice of the figure is stored almost twice
(without color changes only once) in the PDF output file and reused
for each appearance. And PPower4 needs to read each figure only once.
I know, that texpower will need multiple reads, but I do not see a way
of avoiding this, if one wants to keep full flexibility.
Third recombining the levels in Xfig would not allow to get rid of
parts of a figure later on. You would not have a method of specifying
the level to vanish. But that is needed often and used in the example.
Overwriting with a background color to get rid of something is a bad
idea, because that may also overstrike parts of other levels and will
result in strange effects with backgrounds other that monochrome.
> Is this possible with the patched version of xfig?
Writing combined figures is not supported by the Xfig extension.
Regards,
Klaus
--
Klaus Guntermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
FG Systemprogrammierung, FB Informatik, TU Darmstadt
Wilhelminenstr. 7, D-64283 Darmstadt
