[metapost] macro path

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 3/25/07, Steve MC Han wrote:
> Hi,  I have trouble with metapost. Could someone give some insight for this?
>
> This is the error message.
>
> <<! Unable to make mpx file.
> l.78 label.bot(btex
>                     $\hbox{\sf Rectangle}$ etex, (0,-.6u));
> 6 output files written: 2MS4.1 .. 2MS4.8
> Transcript written on 2MS4.log.>>
>
> So, I tried set the path straight by typing "c:\TexLive2007\bin\win32" at
> command prompt, it magically worked. But with different file, I still have
> trouble with similar error message. This time, even with set path like
> above, it didn't work.
>
> <<mpost --tex=latex 2MS3
> This is MetaPost, Version 0.993 (Web2C 7.5.6)
> (2MS3.mp [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]makempx: Command
> failed: la
> tex mpxerr.tex; see mpxerr.log
> >> 2MS3.mp
> >> 2MS3.mpx
> ! Unable to make mpx file.
> l.156 label.lft(btex
>                      $A$ etex, z8);
> 11 output files written: 2MS3.0 .. 2MS3.10
> Transcript written on 2MS3.log.>>
>
> This trouble started after I did "mptopdf". At first, mptopdf didn't create
> pdf files even thoufgh there was no error message. So, by consulting Contex
> conversion to pdf manual
>
> http://tex.aanhet.net/context/mirror/general/sources/mptopdf.pdf
>
> I typed "pdftex --ini mptopdf" at prompt command and after that it produced
> pdf files but now mpost didn't work with the above error message. I think
> path
>
> c:/TeXLive2007/texmf-var/fonts/map/dvips/updmap/psfonts.map
>
> is screwed up somehow.

The mechanism has been changed heavily in May 2006 (before that, the
old mechanism sometimes didn't recognize ConTeXt properly), so I was
finally glad that it worked as it should. But no LaTeX user has ever
upgraded ConTeXt before TeXLive 2007 came around. I used mptopdf, but
it never came to my mind to try it with the latex switch.

In the long term it should really be fixed, but as a temporary
workaround you should be able to convert files without the latex
switch. If you need some special settings (a special font or whatever
else), please post some concrete example. You can just delete
everything latex-related and safely use ConTeXt command with mptopdf
(which really shouldn't be much different).

I'm really sorry for the inconvenience ...

See also http://www.ntg.nl/pipermail/ntg-context/2007/023050.html

Mojca


A minimal example for Hans:

verbatimtex
%&latex
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
etex

beginfig(1);
  draw btex $A$ etex;
endfig;
end.

(perhaps it would make sense to add a note on
http://www.tug.org/texlive/bugs.html)