[texhax] D. Knuth and Metapost

Rodolfo Medina romeomedina at libero.it
Fri Aug 22 23:37:43 CEST 2003


Hi, everyone.

I read that D. Knuth uses nothing else but MetaPost for diagrams in text
that he is writing.
If it's true, why doesn't he use directly his Metafont?
(From whose sources much of MetaPost's source code was copied with Knuth's
permission, I read.)
My question arise because I'd like to draw pictures in plain TeX simply by
Metafont.
However, Metapost includes facilities for directly integrating TeX text and
mathematics with the graphics, that Metafont does not seem to provide.
Maybe is this the reason because D. Knuth uses Metapost?
But certainly he could create himself such facilities with Metafont if he
wanted to!
Could it be possible to create such macros and facilities
(like Metapost's `btex' and `etex', that insert formulas inside pictures,
and others)
with Metafont?

Can anyone suggest an answer? Thanks.

Rodolfo
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