[metapost] Re: MetaPost 0.891 announcement

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi Larry,

Thank you for your comments. I'll use them to clarify
the CHANGES document. Here are my replies:

Larry Siebenmann wrote:
> 
>  > 3. TEX.mp now has TeX format support through a 
>  >  pair of macros called TEXPRE() and TEXPOST().
> 
> Please give an example.

This example is given in the manual (mpman.pdf):

   input TEX;
   TEXPRE("%&latex" & char(10) &
          "\documentclass{article}\begin{document}");
   TEXPOST("\end{document}");
   beginfig(100)
     last := 5;
     for i := 0 upto last:
      label(TEX("\( n_{" & decimal(i) & "} \)"), (5mm*i,0));
     endfor
     ...
   endfig;

I will not repeat this whole example in the CHANGES
though, but add this:

   This allows you to process the contents of the TEX() macro
   with, for example, LaTeX (instead of plain TeX).
   An example is given in the manual.

>  > 5. The EPS output no longer contains spaces 
>  > within PostScript strings
> 
> Why?  (I am not even sure I get the meaning.)

   beginfig(1);
   label("a space", (100,100));
   endfig;

now outputs:

   84.47482 98.82385 moveto
   (a\040space) cmr10 9.96265 fshow

instead of

   84.47482 98.82385 moveto
   (a space) cmr10 9.96265 fshow

This makes the result much easier to tokenize and does not
hamper processing the file in any other way.

>  > 6. The EPS output now also has a 
>  > %%BeginProlog DSC comment
> 
> And hopefully an %%EndProlog  DSC comment.

It did that already.

> BUGFIXES.
> 
>  > 4. The PostScript output could contain 
>  > 8-bit characters in previous versions.
> 
> Do you mean the Encapsulated PostScript output, or any
> PostScript output?

Some distributions redefined the 'is this character
printable' test in the web source, so that 8-bit accents
sometimes appeared as-is in the output file instead of as
a postscript octal escape (because terminal/log printing
and postscript printing used the same test).

>   > 6. ...the new code
>   >  always draws straight lines between the knot points
> 
> Does a non-cyclic path of length N have 3N+1 "knot" points?

Using my definition it does not, it has N+1 points. If you know
a better wording for this line, that would be great. I've
changed "knot points" => "actual points" for now.

The word 'non-cyclic' is a typo on your side, I assume?
Only cyclic paths have turning numbers.

>  > 8. mpto uses...  "mpto" ==> "mptoTeX"

No, it is called mpto. There is only one mpto in the current
release, that serves both TeX and Troff.

 > Please be more explicit.

How?

>  > 9. ...      "added1"  ==> "added"

ok

Thanks, Taco