[metapost] Plotting step functions

[Paul Menzel]

Dear MetaPost folks,


is there an easy way to define a path and let the lines in between
connected like a step function?

Is that already supported out of the box? Do you know existing macros
capable of doing that? The solution should be similar to drawing the
upper and lower Riemann sum in exercise 28 in the MAPS article Learning
MetaPost by Doing from André Heck [1].

The “brute force” method would be to make that manually.

        \starttext
        \startMPpage
        draw (0,0)--(10,10)--(15,5)--(20,10);
        draw (0,0)--(0,10)--(10,10)--(10,5)--(15,5)--(15,10)--(20,10) withcolor blue;
        \stopMPpage
        \stoptext

Having a command for that like -xy- or -yx- (depending what sides of the
rectangle to be used) would be comfortable though.

        draw (0,0)-xy-(10,0)-xy-(10,10)-xy-(0,10)-xy-(0,0);

Please find some examples attached. The simple random walk example is
from Mojca Miklavec [2].


Thanks,

Paul


[1] http://staff.science.uva.nl/~heck/Courses/mptut.pdf
[2] http://www.ntg.nl/pipermail/ntg-context/2011/058528.html
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