[metapost] accessing letters in picture (for...within loop)

[Taco Hoekwater]

Stephan Hennig wrote:
> 
>>>PS:  Taco, would it take much to change MetaPost's behaviour in this
>>>respect?
>>
>>TeX is using kerning between certain letter pairs, and that is to
>>blame for the apparent randomness of the chunks (it generates small
>>horizontal shifts in the DVI file that have to be converted to
>>metapost).
> 
> 
> A work around on the TeX side could be to add known horizontal space
> between any two characters to split strings in the intermediate DVI
> stage.  On the MetaPost side one had to correct for that space.  Since I
> do not know how to add horizontal space while preserving true kerning
> space I'll move to some other list with that question.
> 
>>I cannot change this, because it would break existing figures.
> 
> Could an option solve such issues, e.g., charwise:=1 ?

Not easily, but I'll think about it. (perhaps a special \special
for dvitomp to interpret)

Taco