[metapost] MetaPost 1.200 announcement

[Taco Hoekwater]

The MetaPost team is happy to announce a new release of MetaPost:

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MetaPost 1.200
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The standalone distribution package and a win32 binary can be downloaded
immediately from

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

This release will also be available from CTAN soon, and it will be
included in the next TeXLive. The source package should compile normally
on all systems that are capable of compiling a modern web2c-based TeX
distribution.

The win32 binary is intended for texlive or a similar web2c-based
installation, this executable will *not* work for miktex.

Of course, we welcome any comments (either good or bad) that you may
have. Simply replying to this message is fine, but see the bottom of
the message for a more formal way to report bugs and feature requests.

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What is new in MetaPost version 1.200:
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New features:

* It is now possible to get the actual path drawing routines from a
  font glyph. The syntax is :

    q := glyph 113 of "cmr10";
    q := glyph "one.oldstyle" of "lmr10";

  "glyph" is a primary binary operator (like "subpath") that accepts
  a string or number and a string, and the result is a picture.

  The second argument is a tfm name. This will be combined with
  a fontmap entry to find the font's PostScript source file.

  If the first argument is a string, then it should be a Charstring
  name in the postscript font source. If the first argument is
  an integer, it is an index into the encoding of the font, and
  the Charstring that is mapped to that index is taken (it follows
  that numeric values have to be integers between 0 and 255).

  The returned picture can be empty (if the tfm or the pfb or the
  encoding or the Charstring was not found), otherwise it consists
  of a list of 'fill' objects that use the the 'grey' color model.
  Counterclockwise paths receive the grey value matching 'white',
  clockwise paths 'black'.

* MetaPost now supports string valued internal variables. Three of
  these are predefined ("jobname", "outputformat", "outputtemplate"),
  you can add more of them via "newinternal".

    newinternal string s;
    s := "hello";

  The type of a new internal is either 'string' or 'numeric',
  and defaults to numeric (this is for backward compatibility with
  older versions of MetaPost). String internals are initialized to
  the empty string, numeric internals are initialized to zero.

* MetaPost now has a second backend that generates Scalable Vector
  Graphics output. This new backend was requested by Dave Crossland, who
  also provided the funding to make it possible.  Dave, thank you again!

  The default value of "outputformat" is "eps"; when you assign "svg"
  you will get SVG output.

  If you use text labels with SVG, you will probably also want to set

    prologues:=3;

  With this setting, MetaPost will convert the font into curves
  (of course you also need a correct font map line, just as for
  PostScript output).

  With any other value of "prologues" you will simply get the SVG
  default text font in a system-dependant encoding. This is unlikely
  to be what you want!

  A simple example:

    outputformat := "svg";
    outputtemplate := "%j-%c.svg";
    beginfig(1);
    fill fullcircle scaled 100 withcolor .4red;
    endfig;
    end.

  In the lua bindings, there is the new figure method "svg()", that
  gives back the SVG output string. This is subtly different from the
  direct file output: the lua method does not prepend an XML declaration
  (this makes embedded use of the generated XML easier).

* The new internal string variable "outputtemplate" replaces
  "filenametemplate". The big difference is that "outputtemplate"
  is a true 'internal', so that you need a proper assignment.
  On the positive side, this means that you can use its current
  value with e.g. show and message.

* "outputtemplate" has a new type of replacement: internal variable
  names. Instead of the short "%j.%c", you could write:

     outputtemplate := "%{jobname}.%{charcode}" ;

  this type of replacement works for all internal variables,
  including those defined via "newinternal".

* There are two new numeric internals: "hour" and "minute".
  (these are a consequence of the outputtemplate change)

* The primitive "jobname" is now a string internal instead of a
  special case. This implies you can assign to "jobname", but
  such an assignment will only affect the picture output. The
  job name for the purposes of log and mem file names is fixed
  permanently at startup time and cannot be altered.

* "mpost" can now pretend to be dvitomp. Either copy the executable
  to the name "dvitomp", or pass the switch --dvitomp on the command
  line.

* The command line option --halt-on-error has been reinstated.

* There is a new -s<internal>=<value> command line switch that can
  be used to setup run time values. Such assignment will be executed
  after initialization is complete (i.e. after mem file loading) but
  before any other code is executed.

  This works for all internal variables, including one defined
  that may have been defined in the mem file via "newinternal".

* "tracingstats:=1;" now prints the highest and total input levels.

Bug fixes:

* The turningnumber calculation had a rounding error in the internal
  arithmetic that could cause incorrect numbers to be calculated
  (typically resulting in a 'turning numbers do not match' error).

* The parsing of command line arguments with options was broken.

* Reading of files with 8-bit names has been fixed.

* A patch by Melissa O'Neill fixes inclusion of some special Type1
  formats.

* There was a bug where, when "prologues:=3;", the lists of the
  DocumentResources/DocumentSuppliedResources could appear in the eps
  output partially uncommented.

* Troff labels were completely broken in all MPlib-based versions.

Other changes:

* Many, many improvements to the manual and the tutorial. Sorry
  Stephan, I don't know enough to list them all!

* The old executable build system has been replaced by the new build
  system from the TeXLive 2009 repository.

* The MetaPost (and mplib) source code is now released under LGPL
  instead of GPL, and uses a derivative of PyAvl instead of GNU libavl.

* The web2c 'mktexfmt' feature is enabled for the program "mpost" once
  again.

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Legal notice / license / bug reports
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MetaPost is a system for producing graphics developed by John Hobby
at AT&T, based on Donald Knuth's Metafont.  The MetaPost home page
is http://tug.org/metapost.

MetaPost is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

The MetaPost development project is currently hosted at Supelec,
https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/metapost; please report bugs and
request enhancements through there if possible. Alternatively, you
can reach us through the <metapost at tug.org> mailing list as well.

Have fun!

Taco Hoekwater, for the MetaPost team, May 11, 2009.