# [metapost] Does MetaPost catch on?

Fri Sep 3 00:03:26 CEST 2010

On Thu, 2 Sep 2010, Hans Hagen wrote:

> On 2-9-2010 10:10, Stephan Hennig wrote:
>
>> Ha, ha! I really like the idea. ;-) But is MetaPost really visible
>> outside TeX world so that it could indeed promote TeX? I tend to think
>> it is not, unfortunately.
>
> You hardly need any tex when dealing with metapost. For instance a context
> user can say:
>
> \startMPpage
>  draw fullcircle scaled 10cm ;
>  draw textext("\bf Some text $a =1$"}
> \stopMPpage
>
> and when processing that with "context thatfile.tex" he/she will get a nicely
> cropped pdf.

I think that when using mplib, we should modify the macros draw, label,
etc., so that troff is completely removed from the picture. That is, I
should be able to use

\startMPpage
draw "\bf Some text $a = 1$" ;

label ("$\hat x$", (1cm,0)) ;
\stopMPpage

and have the label typeset by TeX. In mplib, is their any advantage of not
keeping this the default.

I believe this is easy to do in ConTeXt MkIV. I am not sure about the
current state of using mplib inside LaTeX and plain TeX, but that should
also be doable.

Oh, and I realize, that I am suggesting just the opposite of what the OP
requested :-).