[metapost] Does MetaPost catch on?

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 7 September 2010 Stephan Hennig wrote:

 > But what about those graphics enthusiasts that don't know or use
 > TeX?  To those MetaPost is virtually non-existent.

Come on, those who are able to use Metapost are aware of TeX and
Metapost already, those who don't *use* TeX won't use Metapost for the
same reason they don't use TeX, and the rest are butchers, plumbers,
and hairdressers.

 > There's no recent executable to download and try out somewhere.
 
There are executables for 19 different platforms in TeX Live 2010
which you can download from tug.org.

 > Compare this to any other graphics program.

Done:

      http://www.tlhiv.org/mppreview/

 > 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.

TeX is ubiquitous.  troff is a Unix tool and expects a working Unix
environment.  Good luck when porting it to a system where pipes try to
fix line endings in binary files...

Stefan, I still don't know what the thread is about.  Do you consider
to provide such a Metapost distribution yourself or do you just make a
proposal?  Your concept is not very convincing.  I fear that you waste
your time.  Luigi's concept is much better.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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