[metapost] bug in mpto 0.902

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi Harold,

Harold Thimbleby wrote:
> I'm sure you know ... but mpto doesn't follow metapost's input 
> statements, so no input'd file can use btex or verbatim tex, even 
> inside macro bodies.

Nothing is stopping you from using a completely new set of btex
and verbatimtex statements in each of the input files, but it is
indeed a well-known fact that verbatimtex blocks are not
remembered when you switch over from the main file to an input
file.

'mpto' cannot be fixed in the current situation, because any
change to the label processing breaks existing documents.

Not all is bad, though. With the standard 'TEX.mp' macro package,
you write 'TEX("string")' instead of explicit 'btex ... etex'
statements, and that works fine across input files. I assume that
the 'latexmp' package also fixes the limitation, but I do not use
LaTeX myself, so I am not sure.

> The distribution I have (tetex) doesn't seem to include source, so I 
> can't fix the problem..... maybe I'll write a flatten util, but then 
> I need mpost to have a file/line number sync.

There are already somewhat detailed plans to create a new labeling
system to replace the current makempx-based version. That should
hopefully appear in metapost version 1.1 (due in the late sprint,
early summer). If your problem is not urgent, perhaps it is better
to wait for that or perhaps even lend a hand. We would be really
grateful to have someone else willing to help programming.

Just in case you still want to go ahead and change current metapost,
you had better work with the current source of metapost:

    https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/metapost

The 0.994 beta is still essentially identical to the SCM repository.

Cheers, Taco