[metapost] Beginners question

[Laurence.Finston at gmx.net]

> thank you for your answer, I was more thinking of the interface than the usage of fonts. I have my own font implementation that I would like to use in > metapost.

According to the table on page 80 of "MetaPost:  A User's Manual", `draw' is a macro defined in plain.mp, so I suggest you look up how it's defined there.  On my system (TeXLive) it's here:  /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/metapost/base/plain.mp

However, I don't think it does anything than `label' would.  What do you mean by "font implementation"?  Are they PostScript or METAFONT (bit-map) fonts?  There is no particular difficulty in defining a macro using `def' or `vardef' to insert text, but I don't know if it's possible to get the exact syntax you want.  I haven't read through Taco's solution.

> Gesendet: Dienstag, 12. September 2023 um 15:35 Uhr
> Von: "Patrick Gundlach" <patrick at gundla.ch>
> An: metapost at tug.org
> Betreff: Re: [metapost] Beginners question
>
> Hello Laurence,
>
> > Am 12.09.2023 um 15:24 schrieb Laurence.Finston at gmx.net:
> >
> > In your example, you use a low-level command. Normally, one uses `label' or `dotlabel' to include text in a MetaPost file and this is what I'd recommend.
>
> thank you for your answer, I was more thinking of the interface than the usage of fonts. I have my own font implementation that I would like to use in metapost.
>
> Currently I have something like:
>
> def mytext(expr t, fnt, style) =
>    runscript("sometext{"& fnt & ":" & style & ":" & t &"}")
> enddef;
>
> to be used like
>
> draw mytext( "my text to be output", "Meta Pro", "regular");
>
> and I was thinking if this is a good interface.
>
> I really like the macros like:
>
> draw "my text to be output" infant "Meta Pro" withstyle "regular";
>
> but I have no idea how this can be implemented or if it has any drawbacks.
>
> Patrick
>
>
>
> --
> http://tug.org/metapost/
>