[texhax] Plain TeX: how to have hyperlinks and mpost pictures in pdf format?

[Oleg Katsitadze]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 03:32:06PM +0000, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> As a plain TeX user, I wish to have also in pdf format the hyperlinks that I
> get in the dvi file and the mpost pictures that I get in ps format.
> 
> I read that LaTeX users can use the hyperref package.  What should plain TeX
> users do?

If you are a purist, you'd write your own macros using pdftex
primitives.  Otherwise, you can use one of the packages for plain TeX
which already do that for you.  My favorite is http://tug.org/eplain/ :).

BTW, Eplain will also let you use many features of LaTeX's graphics
package.  It uses miniltx.tex which is usable outside of Eplain, but
Eplain enables some additional features.

Before using Metapost-generated EPS files with pdftex, you'd need to
convert them to PDF.  There are many options, if I remember the names
correctly:  epstopdf, mptopdf, convert (from ImageMagick),
epstopdf.sty which can load and convert metapost EPS on the fly, etc.

HTH,
Oleg