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isteinbrecher / latex2ai

LaTeX Plugin for Adobe Illustrator
MIT License
147 stars 5 forks source link

Add availability of "Expand" #112

Closed HuangXiaoKai closed 1 year ago

HuangXiaoKai commented 1 year ago

Thank you for your work that makes inserting LaTeX formula in AI so convenient and elegant!

In some cases, it may be good for user to expand the rendered formula into "vector shapes" so the .ai file will be good to go even without this plugin. Or, in rare cases, figure maker may want to bend the simple formula to fit the data curve, which also require the "Expand" function.

Do you think "Expand" availability necessary and technically achievable?

isteinbrecher commented 1 year ago

Thank you for your suggestion. The topic of embedding LaTeX2AI labels into Illustrator is a little bit tricky. However it should already be possible to do what you are suggesting.

the .ai file will be good to go even without this plugin

If you want to use a .ai document with LaTeX2AI labels without the PlugIn, you have to make sure, the links folder containing the pdf labels stays next to your Illustrator document.

Or, in rare cases, figure maker may want to bend the simple formula to fit the data curve, which also require the "Expand" function.

For this case two solutions come to my mind:

  1. Bend the label directly in LaTeX (e.g., with TikZ)
  2. Manually embedding the label in Illustrator, either with the embed function (this can lead to issues if the correct fonts are not available on your system) or use the Object / Flatten Transparency function and select Convert All Text to Outlines. It his is done however, the item will not be editable any more.
HuangXiaoKai commented 1 year ago

Yes, thank you. I think object->Flatten Transparency is just what I need.