ああああああ

After finally fiddling around with mesh gradients in Inkscape I discover that the way pdflatex handles pdfs (at least when used as a graphic) means that the final output has issues when viewed in Preview (namely, the mesh gradient doesn’t get rendered, similarly with some gradients containing transparency). Bloody ridiculous that this has been an issue apparently for at least the last 15 years! Very frustrating. The thought of having to rasterise the gradients first is incredibly disheartening — sorta defeats the point of having vector graphics. Or what, just have some kind of disclaimer at the start of the document saying “don’t open in Preview”? Bollocks.

Playing around with some kind of flat shading for the ‘cone over fig-8’ branch point picture but yet to produce anything to my liking. Below is the closest I’ve gotten but I don’t know…

I exported the above at 300dpi and yet it looks like arse uploaded here, what on Earth..?