Thesis I: Adding Images

Estimated reading time: ~3 minutes with ~639 words.

This post is on how I added images to my thesis. I drew all my figures using Goodnotes 5 on an iPad, and used inkscape and cairosvg on a Linux machine to convert it to something that could be included in LaTeX.

Step 1: Importing to Goodnotes

The easiest way for me to do this was:

• On computer: Compile latex file $\to$ upload pdf to a private discord server.

• On iPad: download pdf from discord $\to$ open it in Goodnotes.

Step 2: Drawing

There are two kinds of images that I have in my thesis. The first is a full page image that goes as a background for the entire page.

Figure 1: The left figure is right after importing, and the right figure is what’s left after drawing.

The second is on the margins to explain the text in the main body.

Figure 2: The left figure is right after importing, and the right figure is what’s left after drawing.

Since I only export a single page in Step 3, I usually collect many of these small figures into a single page before exporting.

Figure 3: A page containing many small drawings meant to go into the margins.

Step 3: Exporting from Goodnotes

I click on “Export this page” $\to$ including page background and annotation, with PDF Data Format as “Editable” $\to$ sharing it to my private discord server.

Figure 4: Options for exporting from Goodnotes.

Step 4: Importing to Inkscape

I download the pdf from my discord server into a temporary directory, which for me is ~/Downloads/, and import it into inkscape with whatever default options inkscape provides me.

Step 5: Editing on Inkscape

Full page drawings

There is a layer on top of the image that needs to be removed, so I click anywhere on the image and click ‘Delete’. Since I want it to maintain the page ratio, I deselect everything (which exports with the original aspect ratio) and export to $PROJECT/figures/<chapter>/<image>.svg.

Figure 5: Export for a full page drawing.

Margin drawings

For margin drawings, I have a page full of various drawings that are imported. I first remove the top layer on the image by clicking anywhere on the image and clicking ‘Delete’.

Case 1: No changes. There are some images that need no changes to be made. For these, I select the part of the image that comprises the necessary margin drawing and export to $PROJECT/figures/<chapter>/<image>.svg as above.

Case 2: Only layering differences. There are some images where I did the shading after the drawing, so the shading is “on top of” the drawing, which gives a weird color. So the shading layer needs to be “sent back”.

Figure 6: Difference between having the shading layer on the top (left image) and in the back (right image).

For this I use the inkscape tool “Lower selection to bottom”.

Figure 7: The “Lower selection to bottom” tool in Inkscape.

Case 3: Reflections and duplications. Goodnotes does not allow programmatic manipulation of diagrams. For some lower bound reductions, I need the same structure on the left and on the right, but mirrored. So I draw the left side, and also include the right side labels since they are different and not mirrors of the left side labels.

Figure 8: Left side of the reduction that needs to be mirrored, plus the right side labels.

I select the left side that needs to be duplicated, and use ‘Ctrl+d‘ to duplicate, then move it over to the right and remove the unnecessary labels. Then I mirror it using the ‘Flip selected objects horizontally’ using ‘h‘ and move it into place, then move the relevant labels to the correct places.

At the end of this step, there should be a file called $PROJECT/figures/<chapter>/<image>.svg.

Step 6: Converting svg to pdf

One could have tried exporting as pdf in the last step directly from Inkscape. This fucks up the shading from the “highlighting” tool from Goodnotes, you can try and see how it goes. So I need to use cairo. I go to the corresponding folder and run

cairosvg "input.svg" -o "input.pdf"

Since I have many svgs, I have the following script saved as $PROJECT/figures/svg2pdf.

#!/bin/bash

FOLDER="$1"

if [ ! -d "$FOLDER" ]; then
    echo "Error: Folder ’$FOLDER’ does not exist."
    exit 1
fi

for f in "$FOLDER"/*.svg; do
    pdf="${f%.svg}.pdf"
    echo "Converting $f -> $pdf"
    cairosvg "$f" -o "$pdf"
done

I call it as ./svg2pdf <chapter> and it converts all the svgs in the $PROJECT/figures/chapter/ subfolder to pdfs.

Step 7: Including the figure in latex

The \graphicspath takes care of setting the folder, so I just need to name the file that I want to use. So I use unique names for all figures across all directories.

I include the full page images like so.

\setpagebg{partridge}

This command is self-defined, like the following, in formatting.tex

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\setpagebg}[1]{\AddToShipoutPictureBG*{\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]{#1}}}
\makeatother

This command requires a \usepackage{eso-pic} in packages.tex.

The margin images go like so.

\sidefigure[*-4]{neighboring}

The optional argument to sidefigure is an offset, so *-4 offsets it upwards by 4 times the \baselineskip.

It is self-defined in formatting.tex using \marginfigure, a command already present in kaobook.

\newcommand{\sidefigure}[2][0pt]{\begin{marginfigure}[#1]\includegraphics{#2}\end{marginfigure}}