[metapost] [mp-implementors] mp 1.102 and tutorial

[Stephan Hennig]

Troy Henderson schrieb:
>> I'm currently working on the tutorial
> 
> Which tutorial is this?
> 
>> (i) It doesn't discuss the cmykcolor type.
> 
> I'm assuming you're still talking about this mysterious tutorial ;)
> Is it in the trunk?  I can't find it.

Karl made your PracTeX article available in top-level directory
'tutorial' in the SVN repo.


>> Of course, there's much more that can be done, but I think with these
>> items resolved it can be released as is.  Troy, I'll contact you about
>> other stuff later.
> 
> I hang out in the IRC chatroom #latex on FreeNode and am considered
> the MetaPost guru in there,

I have to take a look at that.


> and the two most common reasons that people are choosing TikZ over
> MetaPost that
> 
> 1) TikZ allows the user to put their code directly in their LaTeX
> documents where MetaPost uses an external file and an external
> compilation is needed.
> 
> 2) TikZ has a good bit of examples, and that seems to be a big turn-on
> to folks wanting to learn it.
> 
> Now as far as (1) is concerned, there's the `emp` (encapsulated
> metapost) package for LaTeX, although I'm not sure how to use it.  The
> main reason I've never done this is because it goes against the
> philosophy of having your text and your graphics separately (which I
> believe in).  However, may others want the portability of a single
> file for their source code, and I can certainly understand it (even if
> I don't agree with it).

The "problem" should solve with the proliferation of LuaTeX.  On the
other hand, describing the emp package could be part of a centralized
description of the MetaPost eco-system.  There are several application
that can interact with MetaPost that lack prominent documentation.  Next
step would be to improve those applications.  Gnuplot and Graphviz are
just two examples, that could generate better MetaPost code, IMHO.


> As for (2), there are quite a bit of MetaPost examples out there, but
> perhaps the complaint (I'm not sure) is that they're not all
> consolidated.  I certainly think we could make a very strong case for
> MetaPost if we would address these two issues.

I think, there's just too much to be done on the documentation front. :(
 Let's move to the MetaPost list so that the discussion becomes more
attention.

Best regards,
Stephan Hennig