[pdftex] MPS code that drives gv/acroread crazy

[Marco Kuhlmann]

* Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> (2002-08-24 20:00:40 +0200):

> hm, what are these specials supposed to do, maybe there are
> better ways?

I had a closer look at this, and it seems that the specials are
used to implement a reasonably efficient handling of bitmap
graphics in MetaPost.  The fshow function is redefined such that
it can output text that encodes a line of a picture.  This is
done by the special fonts fmp1, fmp8, fmp24, which correspond to
different colour depths.  When the redefined function sees that
one of these pseudo-fonts has been chosen, it interprets the
chars as the data for an image command.

I don't know what I should do about this.  I am not really sure
if I like the whole bitmap business in MetaPost.  Is it easy to
remedy the problems that these specials cause?

    Thanks,
    Marco