[metapost] Does MetaPost catch on?

[Stephan Hennig]

Am 07.09.2010 14:10, schrieb luigi scarso:
> On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Stephan Hennig<mailing_list at arcor.de>  wrote:
>>
>> People that don't use TeX to typeset text in their vector graphics program.
>>   That is, those who don't have text in their graphics at all or who use the
>> built-in text rendering capabilities, e.g., in Inkscape. There might be
>> people among them that could be interested in MetaPost but don't consider
>> installing a full TeX distribution just to peek at it.
> Aha, that's remainder me that I want to do something
> with Inkscape 0.48 and context mkiv
> following textext
> http://pav.iki.fi/software/textext/

I didn't want to say Inkscape is inferior to MetaPost wrt typesetting. 
If Inkscape can use TeX or MetaPost to typeset text that's fine.  Let me 
again try to make my point clear.

There's a set of graphics enthusiasts out there: (occasional) MetaPost 
users and strict non-MetaPost users.  MetaPost users in general know 
about TeX.  Irrelevant here.  Graphic enthusiasts that don't use 
MetaPost either know about TeX or they don't know.  Those that do know 
TeX are also irrelevant, since to them MetaPost is visible through files 
and documents on their hard-disk, questions on newsgroups or mailing 
lists, TeX related websites etc.

But what about those graphics enthusiasts that don't know or use TeX? To 
those MetaPost is virtually non-existent. 
<URL:http://tug.org/metapost.html> has not a single graphic, 
<URL:http://ect.bell-labs.com/who/hobby/MetaPost.html> has a single 
arrow graphic and is way behind with the information presented.  There's 
no recent executable to download and try out somewhere.  Compare this to 
any other graphics program.

As for troff, the reason I had the idea to bundle it with MetaPost was 
to have it as a back-up typesetting engine if TeX isn't available. 
(Which would be the case for a stand-alone MetaPost distribution.) 
Without a typesetting engine MetaPost is incomplete as the built-in 
typesetting capabilities are too limited (no kerning, no maths).  The 
idea is not about pushing troff, but about preventing the impression of 
failure at first sight.

Best regards,
Stephan Hennig