[metapost] Trying to figure out MPLib

[Hans Hagen]

On 4-8-2012 17:07, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> BTW you mention "non-elliptical". If I define a generic bean-shape
>> (for example) using smooth curves and use it as a pen, would it be
>> stroked? Or are any pens with smooth curves a no-no and only linear
>> pens are stroked?
>
> Another oops on my part: only now do I read the MP doc that makepen
> will convert paths to be polygonal. Sorry.

concerning pens ... mp relies on a combination of path and postscript 
drawing properties to get paths with non circular pens (in pdf this is 
somewhat different as there we need to output the path twice for that to 
happen) .. this is why taco pointed to the pdf conversion code

concerning dealing with the result of mp: if I were you I'd not too much 
depend on those internals as (just as with luatex) things will change 
when it suits the dev purpose

probably the best place to look is the mp-lua interface as that one uses 
an abstract (and stable) view of the result (i.e. access to all the 
properties of the image after it's constructed)

Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------