[tex-k] Fwd: Re: [metapost] problem with 'dvips mproof'

[Stephan Hennig]

Am 10.10.2010 22:46, schrieb Tom Rokicki:
> So everything works fine with prologues := 0, correct?

Pretty much, yes. I'm not exactly sure, because there is the slightly 
different rendering between prologues:=0 and 1 when zooming in with PS_View.


> If that is the case, why would one want to set prologues to something
> else?

Good question.  The MetaPost manual was never good at explaining 
prologues in detail.  Additionally, the following paragraph from mpman 
as of MetaPost v0.641 (found on TeX Live 7 dating 2002) somehow disappeared.

> Giving this internal variable a positive value causes causes output
> to be formatted as "structured PostScript" generated on the
> assumption that text comes from built-in PostScript fonts. This makes
> MetaPost output much more portable, but it has an important drawback:
> It generally does not work when you use TEX fonts, since programs
> that translate TEX output into PostScript need to make special
> provisions for TEX fonts in included fi
gures and the standard
> PostScript structuring rules do not allow for this.

(Fortunately, 'svn cat -r 1 mpman.tex' reveals the paragraph didn't 
exist more than a year before I got an svn account.)

The current description of prologues ends with

> It is worth noting that the default value prologues:=0 is sufficient
> for graphics included in TEX-based documents. Also, the prologues
> variable is irrelevant when processing MetaPost files through the
> mptopdf utility (part of the ConTEXt distribution), because PDF files
> are, by nature, stand-alone.  [...]

where 'sufficient' can be interpreted as 'setting prologues to values >0 
doesn't do harm for TeX documents.'  At least, that's how I read it up 
until today.  But now ...

To give use-cases for why it would be desirable for dvips to handle 
prologues >0 more gracefully:

1.  Setting prologues >0 is necessary for previewing MetaPost output in 
a Postscript viewer.  Resetting prologues to 0 before the final 
inclusion into TeX documents can be forgotten by the user.

2.  Using mproof.tex (or mpsproof.tex) for previewing lots of graphics 
as a multi-page document in one instance of the previewer requires 
prologues to be 0.  It is then impossible to preview a particular 
graphic, say, at a different zoom factor, in a second instance of the 
previewer, because prologues is 0 and text labels in the single graphics 
are rendered with a wrong font (if at all).


> Also, if someone can refer me to a web link or PDF document that
> contains Adobe's recommendation in full on naming subsetted fonts,
> I'd be very grateful;

Sorry, I cannot help here.


> I'd like to comply as closely as possible.

Thanks for looking at this!

Best regards,
Stephan Hennig