Is there a way to change the TeX engine from PDFLaTeX to XeLaTeX in Ipe?

Question

In my document, I have to use XeLaTeX to get the output. On the other hand, I'm using Ipe to produce some graphic files with some labels on them. I want to have these labels in Persian. Is there a way to change the TeX engine from pdfLaTeX to XeLaTeX in Ipe?

Answer 1

I do not think it is possible without rewriting Ipe. It is hardcoded in the source, and since Ipe parses the .pdf created by pdfLaTeX, it expects the .pdf file to be generated by actual pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX output would probably confuse it.

You can try to download the source, in the src/ipelib/platform.cpp file replace all occurrences of pdflatex by xelatex, and compile Ipe, but I would be very surprised if that worked.