2 This file is public domain.
4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
5 What is new in the beta release of MPlib 1.060:
6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8 * The MPlib distribution is released under the GPL version 2.
10 * This release is the first that replaces the old metapost distribution
11 completely. The executable is now named 'mpost' with engine name
14 * The release now includes a cweb implementation of the makempx
15 functionality that is linked into the mpost executable.
16 This internal code will be used unless the MPXCOMMAND variable is set.
17 Because of this functionality, the mpware directory is no longer
18 included and the standalone programs 'makempx', 'newer', 'mpto',
19 'dvitomp' and 'dmp'. are no longer maintained.
21 * This is the first development release of the new cycle, and contains
22 all of the functionality of Metapost 1.005. The mpost version is now
23 1.060, and the special version number for the cweb version has been
24 removed from the banner.
26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
27 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.20.0):
28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
30 * Two bugs in MP 1.002 were fixed by Giuseppe Bilotta, both fixes
31 are about polygonals pens and will be included in the upcoming
32 MP 1.003 release also.
34 * It is now possible to ask for the envelope of a path drawn as
35 traced by a (non-elliptical) pen:
38 p = fullcircle scaled 30;
39 q = envelope pensquare of p;
41 * There is a lua interface now, and it is already used by luatex.
43 To play with this, currently the best solution is to fetch the
44 0.25.0 beta of luatex: http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/luatex
45 This embeds MPlib 0.25.0 as well as its documentation.
47 * Many bugs were fixed.
49 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
50 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.10.0):
51 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
53 * The source is converted to cweb, and split into a library part
54 (mpdir/lib/*.w) and a frontend executable (mpdir/mpost.w).
56 * The front end executable is named "newmpost", this takes
57 care of configuring the MPlib library via C code, and uses
58 kpathsea for file searching. There is no change file involved,
59 and the web2c runtime library is not used.
61 * Some of the internal arrays now grow dynamically when needed:
64 * the string pool and number of strings
65 * the font memory and number of fonts
66 * the number of "readfrom" and "write" files
67 * the path segment size
68 * the input nesting stack
69 * the number of new internals
70 * the TFM writing arrays (but these are limited by TFM format)
72 Still not doing that (so these can only be changed in --ini mode):
76 * the number of simultaneous macro parameters
77 * the level of "input" file nesting
79 * The following command-line options are ignored by the front-end
85 -[no-]parse-first-line
91 The other web2c command-line options should work as normal.
93 * the mpware tools are not in this distribution, their functionality
94 will eventually be assimilated into the frontend application.
96 * the build process depends on a local "ctangle" command being in the
97 path, for now. The confiration and building system is not yet complete.
99 * API documentation is still missing, but the MetaPost input language
102 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
103 What is new in version 1.002:
104 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
106 * Version 1.001 introduced a memory allocation error in mpto that could
107 result in the program looping endlessly
109 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
110 What is new in version 1.001:
111 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
113 * The default cmyk 'black' color now uses only black, not all four
114 ink colors (after a discussion on the mailing list).
116 * Some issues were reported with the new turningnumber algorithm,
117 all known problems are now fixed.
119 * Gábor Braun discovered that mpost did not always download the font
120 encodings into all the created output files.
122 * Akira Kakuto and Hartmut Henkel found some small issues in mpto
123 regarding trailing and leading whitespace.
125 * A fix for the 'Helvetica' entries in trfonts.map was provided by
126 Werner Lemberg, and Michail Vidiassov supplied two extra font
127 entries for troff.map (Symbol and ZapfDingbats). Karl Berry
128 provided the new file troff-updmap.map, to be used by the updmap
131 * Mpost now supports web2c's --output-directory option.
133 * Any warnings about missing fonts and characters are now always
134 written to the terminal as well as to the log.
136 * Now that makempx is a C program, it needed a different install line
137 in build.sh. Also, Olaf Mersmann contributed a patch to recognize
140 * Luigi Scarso found some typing errors in the web source that prevented
141 clean weaving of the source.
143 * Stephan Hennig fixed a number of problems in the manual (mpman.tex)
144 and the introduction paper (mpintro.tex). He also wrote new sections on
145 how to preview metapost graphics and on how to use metapost graphics
146 inside other documents. On top of that, the manual is now hypertext-aware,
147 and fixes for a whole series of small problems have been applied.
149 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
150 What is new in version 1.000:
151 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
153 * The use of DSC (document structuring) comments has been
154 been cleaned up, thanks to comments by Michail Vidiassov.
156 * By setting prologues to 2 or 3, you can ask MetaPost to
157 reencode and include the used labels fonts in the output,
158 thus creating proper Encapsulated PostScript files even
159 if labels are present.
161 * Support for greyscale and cmykcolor models is added.
163 * The new drawing options "withprescript" and withpostscript"
164 allow the user to attach PostSCript special text to a specific
167 * Setting the new internal "mpprocset" to 1 will make MetaPost
168 create a somewhat extended preamble that defines shortcuts
169 for the postscript commands (e..g "l" instead of "lineto").
170 For big images, this can help shrink the output a bit.
172 * The pool file is now integrated in the executable, so there
173 is not separate 'mp.pool' anymore, except at build time.
175 * Groff support is redone, and dmp now uses kpathsea searching.
176 Groff related changes are thanks to the efforts of Werner
177 Lemberg and Michail Vidiassov
179 * makempx is now a compiled executable on all systems,
180 thank you Akira Kakuto
182 * The error for 'special's longer then 255 characters
183 is removed, so specials can now be of any length.
185 * There is new turningnumber implementation that attempts
186 to find the mathematically correct "turningnumber" of a
187 path. The formulae are derived from a mailinglist discussion
188 between (especially) Dan Luecking and Giuseppe Bilotta.
190 * The manual is updated and modernized. It is currently
191 maintained by Stephan Hennig and Troy Henderson.
193 ------------------------------------------------------------------
194 Changes in version 0.920:
195 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
197 * Fixed a long-standing bug in web2c where changing values of the
198 memory_size setting in web2c could cause crashes and other random
199 problems. The memory array size is now written to the dump file
200 and loading is aborted if the values do not match.
201 * Implement configurable figure output filename templates.
202 * Implement cmyk, greyscale, and marking only color models.
203 * The mpost executable is now version 0.920
205 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
206 Changes in version 0.902:
207 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
208 * Fix a bug in mpto resulting in correctly placed labels (with
209 thanks to Dan Luecking)
210 * Fix a bug blocking compilation of dmp on MacOSX
211 * The mpost,dmp,mpto executables are now version 0.902
214 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
215 Changes in version 0.901:
216 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
217 * A corrected bugfix for bug item 3 from version 0.9 (the old fix
218 made metapost fail the trap test)
219 * Included mpost.mp for mem generation
220 * Updated the trap test output.
221 * The mpost executable is now version 0.901
223 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
224 What is new in version 0.9:
225 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
226 1. There is a new internal quantity called mpversion that reports the
227 current metapost version, and the version information is also written
228 to the PostScript file.
229 2. The LaTeX sources of the mpman, mpintro, and mpgraph manuals have
230 become part of the distribution package.
231 3. TEX.mp now has TeX format support through a pair of macros called
232 TEXPRE() and TEXPOST(). This llows you to process the contents of
233 the TEX() macro with, for example, LaTeX (instead of plain TeX).
234 An example is given in the manual.
235 4. metapost now writes a %%HiReSBoundingBox comment
236 5. The EPS output no longer contains actual spaces within PostScript
237 strings as for example output by label("a space"), but their
238 octal escape (\040) instead.
239 6. The EPS output now also has a %%BeginProlog DSC comment
240 as well as %%EndProlog
241 7. The comments in the Web source have been changed to point out
242 that on modern machines, acquiring the random seed has actually
243 become a system-dependant operation (a granularity of whole seconds
244 is not small enough on new machines).
245 8. The 'newer' command now accepts more than 2 arguments, testing
246 each of the files in turn.
248 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
249 Bugfixes in version 0.9:
250 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
251 1. Documentation improvements: all known errata and typos have been
252 removed, better explanations of e.g. dash patterns and dotlabel have
253 been provided, and a number of omissions has been rectified.
254 2. The BoundingBox was not computed correctly when a filldraw command
255 with a noticeable pen size was used at the edge of the picture.
256 3. Paths starting with degenerate constructions like (0,0)--(0,0)--(0,0)
257 could overflow memory.
258 4. The PostScript output could accidentally contain 8-bit characters
259 within PostScript strings in previous versions because a test was
260 shared between terminal printing and PostScript printing.
261 5. A bug has been found in the assignment of serial numbers to independant
262 variables in metafont 2.71828. This bug affected MP as well, and the
263 same patch has been applied.
264 6. The turningnumber was sometimes wrong in unexpected ways. The new
265 implementation is still sometimes wrong (when there are strange path
266 segments involved), but in a much more predictable way: the new code
267 always draws straight lines between the actual points, and calculates
268 the turningnumber based on that path instead of the actual path. The
269 effect is that cusps and loops within segments are now completely
270 ignored. A more thorough fix of turningnumber is planned for the
272 7. There was an 'off by one' error in dvitomp wrt. the interpretation
274 8. mpto uses a new TeX macro for the generation of labels, making it
275 more robust wrt. strange user code within the actual label text.
276 9. A missing colon in boxes.mp has been added
277 10. A missing save in mfplain.mp has been added
278 11. The generisize in boxes.mp has been fixed so that it now accepts [[ as
279 a valid variable name
281 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
283 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
284 The only change was to fix the code for transforming a picture that
285 contains a filldraw. Version 0.64 introduced a bug that caused an
286 inappropriate memory reference in that case.
288 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
289 What is new in Version 0.64:
290 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
291 1. A new primitive command closefrom filename closes a readfrom file
292 so that subsequent calls to readfrom with that file name will go back
293 to the beginning of the file.
294 2. The ^^ notation for unprintable characters is now used only when printing
295 on the terminal or the log file. Internal computations and the write
296 command are all 8-bit clean. (This is partly due to material in mp.ch
297 that changes the initialization of the xchr array. Without these
298 system-dependent changes, the write command would map all non-ascii
299 characters to spaces.)
300 3. Arithmetic overflow during a comparison such as 20000>-20000 is now
301 ignored. This avoids extraneous error message when using the graph.mp
303 4. Transformations with negative determinants now work properly on pictures
304 drawn with polygonal pens.
305 5. When the readfrom operator is applied to a file that does not exist,
306 an attempt to close a non-open file could cause problems in some
307 implementations. This has now been fixed.
308 6. Using draw picture_expression withpen where the picture_expression
309 was a scaled picture containing dashed lines, the dash lengths would
310 change. This bug has been fixed.
311 7. The dashpart operator could return an invalid picture or a picture that
312 is not properly scaled. This has also been fixed.
313 8. The |char_base| variable could become negative when using fonts that
314 do not start at character 0. There was also bad Pascal code in function
315 b_open_in. This has all been fixed.
316 9. Dvitomp has been fixed to avoid a font data structure problem that
317 could cause some characters to come out in the wrong font when you
318 mix virtual and non-virtual fonts.
319 10. Dvitomp now correctly prints font names when there is a checksum
320 mismatch, and it aborts instead of just printing an error if a tfm
322 11. In plain.mp, the drawdblarrow macro now uses filldraw so that it works
323 better with large pen sizes.
325 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
327 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
328 When prologues is negative, the output files use full precision for
329 coordinates in "%%BoundingBox" comments. In btex..etex blocks,
330 "number too large" and "invalid character" errors are suppressed.
331 The result of btex..etex is now guaranteed to be in a setbounds path
332 so that a for...within iteration will always treat it as a unit.
334 There are also some obscure bug fixes involving string compaction when
335 scanning a file name or when mp is compiled in debug mode. Some possible
336 identifier name conflicts and range check errors have also been fixed.
339 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
341 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
342 This version fixes an obscure bug that could cause certain perfectly valid
343 strings to be printed as "???" or " NONEXISTENT". It also includes a minor
344 fix to the PATHEXPAND code that prevents running out of file descriptors.
347 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
348 What is new in Version 0.63:
349 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
350 1. Backslashes in the PostScript output are rendered correctly. They used
351 to come out as (\) instead of (\\).
352 2. Recycling an independent variable should no longer cause spurious overflows.
353 (This bug was recently found in mf.web.)
354 3. Pythagorean addition should now be faster in certain trivial cases.
355 4. Rotating text by arbitrary angles should no longer cause bad PostScript
356 output. The problem was that arguments to "fshow" could be inaccurate.
357 5. Obscure bugs inherited from mf.web are now fixed. These involve
358 balancing parentheses showing on the terminal, reporting the correct
359 line number in case of buffer overflow, and removing spurious reference
360 counts that could effect end-of-job statistics.
361 6. Fonts with ec=255 should no longer cause mp's PostScript output routines
363 7. When mp's string mechanism was heavily used, file names could occaisonally
364 be printed on the terminal and log file as "(?)". This has been fixed.
365 8. Setting PATHEXPAND in site.h causes mp, dvitomp and dmp to understand "//"
366 in path variables as "search multiple levels of subdirectories". This is
367 for compatibility with recent versions of the Web2c TeX distribution.
368 9. A typo in mpware/makempx and mpware/troffmpx has been fixed. Previous
369 versions of these scripts would not run on some systems.
370 10. Data files *.d have been added to the doc directory. These are used by
371 doc/mpgraph.mp which generates figures for "Drawing Graphs with MetaPost".
372 11. Typos in mpintro.tex and mp.web's TeX material have been fixed.
373 12. Files examples.mp, mpintro.tex and mpintro.bib have moved from mplib to
375 13. The author's email address now appears in the README file.
378 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
379 Macros added to the mplib directory between Versions 0.50 and 0.62:
380 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
381 rboxes.mp is a slightly more general version of boxes.mp
382 TEX.mp provides a way of running tex dynamically instead of as a pre-processor
383 graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp are documented in doc/mpgraph.ps
384 (This is the same as ftp://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/cs/cstr/164.ps.Z)
385 marith.mp, string.mp, texnum.mp, and troffnum.mp are low-level packages
386 used by graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp.
389 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
390 Other minor bug fixes subsequent to Version 0.60
391 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
392 1. plain.mp has been fixed so that the x**y works properly when x<0 and y is
394 2. Programs mptotex.c and mptotr.c which extract btex..etex material have been
395 fixed so they work properly with input files that do not end with a newline
397 3. Program dmp.c which handles troff output from btex..etex blocks has been
398 modified to avoid outputting any non-ASCII characters that the C function
400 4. Program dmp.c no longer gets troff graphics specials confused with text.
401 This seldom matters because btex..etex blocks are unlikely to contain
403 5. Pictures containing clipped subpictures could come out with some colors
404 in the subpicture wrong.
405 6. Colors in PostSript output were not being restricted to the standard 0..1
407 7. Transforming a path or a pen should no longer generate extraneous overflow
408 errors in certain unusual situations.
409 8. Drawing with a degenerate 2-vertex polygonal pen such as penrazor should
410 no longer cause an infinite loop in certain unusual situations.
411 9. There were some bugs in the mfplain macros. (These macros are designed
412 to similate plain METAFONT.) The drawing and filling macros now apply
413 currenttransform to the path but not the pen rather than vice versa.
414 The predefined modes now set o_correction to 1.0.
415 10. For security reasons, mp can no longer read or write files whose names
419 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
420 Changes to the MetaPost language between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
421 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
422 1. New operator `readfrom <filename>' and new command
423 `write <string expression> to <filename>' do file I/O. Plain defines
424 a special string EOF that readfrom returns to indicate end-of-file
425 and write..to understands as well.
426 2. New iteration type `for p within <picture expression>: <loop text> endfor'
427 iterates through the interior components of the picture. An `interior
428 component' is a single pen stroke, filled outline, or piece of typeset
429 text. A part of the picture enclosed in a clipping or setbounds path
430 also counts as an interior component. If the whole picture is enclosed
431 in such a path, the for..within iteration looks inside. Note that a
432 picture generated by btex..etex is enclosed in a setbounds path.
433 3. The length operator now applies to pictures. It returns the number of
435 4. New boolean operators stroked, filled, textual, clipped, bounded test
436 the first component of a picture. A picture enclosed in a clipping or
437 setbounds path counts as a single component.
438 5. Part extraction operators now work for pictures. Standard operators
439 redpart, greenpart, bluepart apply to the color of the first component
440 and xpart, ypart, xxpart, xypart, yxpart, yypart extract parts of the
441 tranformation that has been applied to a text component. If `textual p'
442 is false, the transform components are all zero; if `clipped p' or
443 `bounded p' is true, the color parts are all zero. Additional operators
444 fontpart, textpart, pathpart, penpart, dashpart extract other information
445 from the first component of a picture. They all return null values when
446 the first component has the wrong type: fontpart and textpart return
447 null strings; pathpart returns the path (0,0); penpart returns nullpen;
448 and dashpart returns nullpicture.
449 6. The construction `dashed nullpicture' is now a no-op. It used to be
451 7. The clip and setbounds statements used to ignore operations on empty
452 pictures. Now they do not.
453 8. Structuring comments in the PostScript output are now based on EPSF-3.0
454 as described in the 2nd Edition of the PostScript Reference Manual.
455 When prologues is 0, some structuring comments are included but the
456 output is not flagged a `conforming document'. Previous versions of
457 MetaPost behaved similarly but used slightly different structuring
459 9. When warningcheck is 0, numeric tokens and results from the hex and
460 oct operators can be as large as 32767.99998. The old limit of about
461 4096 applies only when warningcheck is positive.
462 10. Various optimizations should make the output a little more compact.
463 11. For PostScript engines that obey the scan-conversion rules documented
464 in the 2nd edition PostScript Language Reference Manual, hrules and
465 vrules in btex..etex blocks should now come out to exactly the right
466 number of pixels. The change affects all pen strokes drawn in MetaPost
467 It is implemented via PostScripts dtransform and idtransform operators.
468 12. A bug involving setbounds and MetaPost's corner operators has been fixed.
469 13. Degenerate elliptical pens no longer cause PostScript to divide by zero.
470 14. Fixed a very obscure bug involving readstring and end-of-file.
471 15. String compaction statistics are now printed correctly when the job
472 terminates with tracingstats positive.
476 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
477 Changes to the source files between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
478 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
480 CHANGES to ./README.MP
481 The installation instructions should now be clearer. They also explain
482 how to cope with verious versions of WEB2C.
485 I removed unused entries and clarified instructions in commentary material.
486 Confusing comments about possibly merging it with the WEB2C version of site.h
487 were removed--I think such merging is a bad idea.
489 CHANGES TO ./Makefile, mp/Makefile, mpware/Makefile:
490 Improved default settings, simplified the `install' recipe,
491 fixed a few missing depencies, portability problems, etc.
494 mp/mp.defines, mpware/mpware.defines, mpware/dvitompext.c
495 TO mp/mp.def, mpware/mpware.def, mpware/dvimpext.c
496 (The names also changed in the Makefiles and convert scripts)
498 CHANGES TO mp/mp.web, mp/mp.ch, mp/mp.def, mp/mpext.c:
499 Lots of new features were added as noted above. The only new system-
500 dependencies are for `readfrom' and `write...to'.
501 The change file now increases max_read_files; it doesn't bother with
502 max_write_files, but perhaps it should. There is a new change entitled
503 "Path selector for..readfrom file". From the web2C sources I borrowed
504 a change "`logname' is declared in <unistd.h> in some systems". I also
505 added a PASCAL-like eof() routine to mpext, removed a change entitled
506 "avoid using eof() in read_psname_table" and added a new change
507 "[48.1199] `eof'...[in read_mem_file]".
509 Reorganization of math routines in the mp directory:
510 I moved the floating-point math routines from mpext.c to mpath.c. A
511 C-language version of the standard math routines was moved from mpmath.c
512 to a new file pmath.c for use in mathtest only. This required chages to
513 mathtest.c and time.c (also used only for mathtest). The point of all
514 this is that there is now just one copy of the floating-point math routines
515 and it is used for mathtest and (optionally) for mp itself.
517 Routines in doc and mp/trapdir:
518 The output was updated to Version 0.60. Another test file mptrap.mp
519 tests new features. There have also been minor updates to the manual,
520 although the new features for Version 0.60 are not included yet.
522 CHANGES to macros in mplib:
523 A minor change to boxes.mp should make it more robust. Changed default
524 setting of tracinglostchars in mfplain.mp and plain.mp. Added a string
525 constant EOF to plain.mp for use with readfrom and write..to.
526 Changed mproof.tex to make it more portable as suggested by Knuth.
528 CHANGES to mpware/dvitomp.web, mpware/dvitomp.ch:
529 The web file was changed to output rules as horizontal or vertical
530 penstrokes with butt endcaps. This also affected dvitomp.ch. Also in
531 dvitomp.ch, put terminal output on stdout instead of stderr and require
532 the output file to be given on the command line.
534 CHANGES to mpware/makempx, mpware/troffmpx:
535 Added comments explaining what path names need fixing. Portability improvements
536 and dvitomp's output change affect makempx only.
538 CHANGES to mpware/mptotex.c mpware/mptotr.c mpware/testex.err mpware/testex.mp:
539 Ignore an initial newline in the TeX (or troff) material to avoid generating
540 a blank line in the output file. The test file now covers this case.
542 CHANGE to mpware/newer.c
543 Minor changes to make it compile in strict ANSI/POSIX environments.