|  |  | 6.2 Stylesheet theory

## 6.2 Stylesheet theory

When a stylesheet is "added" to an Ipe document, the contents of the stylesheet file is copied into the Ipe document. Subsequent modification of the stylesheet file has no effect on the Ipe document. The right way to modify your stylesheet is to either "add" it again, and then to delete the old copy from your stylesheet cascade (the one further down in the list), or to use the Update stylesheets function in the Edit menu. This function assumes that the stylesheet file is in the same directory as the document and that the filename coincides with the name of the stylesheet (plus the extension .isy).

Removing or replacing a stylesheet can cause some of the symbolic attributes in your document to become undefined. This is not a disaster—Ipe will simply use some default value for any undefined symbolic attribute. To allow you to diagnose the problem, Ipe will show a warning listing all undefined symbolic attributes.

We discuss a few stylesheet topics in this chapter. Other stylesheet definitions that are (mostly) meant for PDF presentations are discussed in the next chapter.