[metapost] Trying to figure out MPLib

[Shriramana Sharma]

Hello thanks for this response.

On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> wrote:
> concerning dealing with the result of mp: if I were you I'd not too much
> depend on those internals as (just as with luatex) things will change when
> it suits the dev purpose

Which internals? Do you mean the API of MPLib?

> probably the best place to look is the mp-lua interface as that one uses an
> abstract (and stable) view of the result (i.e. access to all the properties
> of the image after it's constructed)

I do not know (or plan on knowing) Lua. C/C++/Python all play with
each other very nicely and have many well-developed and open source
libraries for various purposes including GUI app development (which is
what I am eventually targeting). Lua is less well known than Python
and does not have as many interfacing tools with C/C++ as Python does.
For example right now I'm reading up on the Cython documentation to
see if I can make a Python interface to MPLib. ]

[IMHO it's unfortunate that the whitespace-semantics of Python make it
difficult to integrate it with TeX (IIUC). Else Python would be the
logical IMHO simply because it is most widely used. I realize that may
not be the best criterion so I'll stop here...]

So basically I am OK with tracking the API changes. Since the basic
logic is the same, I presume any changes you would make would not be
too radical.

IMHO it would also be good to have an external (i.e. outside
LuaTeX/ConTeXT) check on the MPLib changes as well... ;-) A consistent
API without too many radical changes would also be what is needed for
what you said about FontForge possibly using MPLib to come to
fruition.

Thanks for all your feedback and help!

-- 
Shriramana Sharma