[metapost] Problem with defaultscale

[John Kitzmiller]

> John Kitzmiller wrote:
>>
>> I am trying things like:
>
> Adding a \documentclass line should help.
>
>> verbatimtex
>> %&latex
>> \def\large#1{\large{#1}}
>> \begin{document}
>> etex
>>
>> with no positive result.
>>
>> A further question is why \sffamily is defined and \large is not? They 
>> both
>> work in a latex file.
>
> Because \sffamily is a latex core command, whereas \large is defined via
> the document class (at least, iirc)
>

Twice in one day I raise my hand, and twice in one day Taco gives a gentle 
and very informative answer. This community is gifted.

To keep my previous example short I stupidly omitted that I routinely use:

\documentclass{minimal}

in my metapost preamble when 'drawing' metapost figures. Changing it to 
{article}, as Taco suggests, allows more control over labels.

prologues:=3;
filenametemplate "%j%c.mps";
verbatimtex
%&latex
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
etex

Perhaps I can start a 'Beginners Corner' on the Wiki to include things like 
this.

Cheers and pax,

John