[NTG-context] luaTeX and on-the-fly MetaPost compilation
taco at elvenkind.com
Sat May 24 15:21:44 CEST 2008
Stephan Hennig wrote:
> Thank you for the outline. For the exact mechanism of how to process an
> .mp file I think there are three possible cases:
> 1. Strictly process what's between figure(n)..endfig only.
> 2. Process everything up-to the specified figure, omitting stuff inside
> non-matching figure numbers.
> 3. Process everything up-to the specified figure, including all
> non-matching figures, but discard their output.
4. Start a new MP instance, process the whole file, save and remember
the outputs (store fig.1, fig.2, fig.3 etc), then immediately close
the MP instance again.
The advantage is that this makes the metapost input behave exactly the
same as a true external figure, something that is not possible when an
already running MP instance is re-used. This is important, because the
state of an already running instance can be altered in such a way that
a perfectly valid metapost source suddenly fails to run. That may happen
with embedded metapost code as well of course, but in that case it is
much easier to correct and diagnose the problem.
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