[metapost] augment drawoptions

[Stephan Hennig]

Taco Hoekwater schrieb:
> Stephan Hennig wrote:
>> 
>>> In fact, I cannot come up an elegant solution to the problem that
>>> does not require rewriting quite a bit of plain.mp.
>> 
>> I would find native support for local draw options (and altering draw
>> options) a useful addition to MetaPost.  What do people think?
> 
> Can you explain a bit more what you have in mind?

Exactly what you have coded.


> My metapost coding isn't very good, so the real experts on the
> list will probably have much nicer ideas, but here is a way you
> can save _op_ in a nicely nested way, simply to demonstrate that
> there are possible solutions:

Phew, stringified array indices scantokenized back into MetaPost ...


> TeX's concept of groups and saving does not really apply to metapost,
> but you could define macros that do nesting and saving of values if
> that is what you need.
> 
> The problem does not have so much to do with the metapost engine
> as it does with the plain.mp macros. What you are asking is somewhat
> similar to asking for generic font encoding support in plain.tex.
> It is possible, but the result would not qualify as "plain" anymore.

If that plain.mp level stuff or not, I don't know.  But to me it sounds
like that calls for an mptools.mp package that provides useful additions
to MetaPost that have no place in plain.mp.  Maybe stuff for the Wiki?

Best regards,
Stephan Hennig