2 This file is public domain.
4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
5 What is new in the beta release of MPlib 1.085:
6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8 * Determination of the mem name to use in non-ini mode is now much
9 closer to the web2c approach.
11 * There is now a magic word in the beginning of the mem file to make
12 sure it is written by the correct version of MPlib.
14 * Fixed the disappearing comment sign in the to-be-typeset document
15 created by the mpx generation subsystem.
17 * Various identifiers have been renamed to avoid clashes (that prevented
18 the source from building correctly on many platforms)
20 * A great many small changes and fixes have been added after running
21 splint on the generated C source.
24 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
25 What is new in the beta release of MPlib 1.080:
26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
28 * The MPlib distribution is released under the GPL version 2 or, at
29 your option, any later version. The copyright statements in the source
30 files have been updated to reflect this.
32 * The mpost program banner now contains the kpathsea version, and no
33 longer mentions the fact that the source is now cweb at all.
35 * The mpost program once again supports 'E' error responses.
37 * There are some minor internal API changes, but there is still no
38 documentation for the API, so that is not very interesting yet.
41 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
42 What is new in the beta release of MPlib 1.060:
43 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
45 * The MPlib distribution is released under the GPL version 2.
47 * This release is the first that replaces the old metapost distribution
48 completely. The executable is now named 'mpost' with engine name
51 * The release now includes a cweb implementation of the makempx
52 functionality that is linked into the mpost executable.
53 This internal code will be used unless the MPXCOMMAND variable is set.
54 Because of this functionality, the mpware directory is no longer
55 included and the standalone programs 'makempx', 'newer', 'mpto',
56 'dvitomp' and 'dmp'. are no longer maintained.
58 * This is the first development release of the new cycle, and contains
59 all of the functionality of Metapost 1.005. The mpost version is now
60 1.060, and the special version number for the cweb version has been
61 removed from the banner.
63 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
64 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.20.0):
65 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
67 * Two bugs in MP 1.002 were fixed by Giuseppe Bilotta, both fixes
68 are about polygonals pens and will be included in the upcoming
69 MP 1.003 release also.
71 * It is now possible to ask for the envelope of a path drawn as
72 traced by a (non-elliptical) pen:
75 p = fullcircle scaled 30;
76 q = envelope pensquare of p;
78 * There is a lua interface now, and it is already used by luatex.
80 To play with this, currently the best solution is to fetch the
81 0.25.0 beta of luatex: http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/luatex
82 This embeds MPlib 0.25.0 as well as its documentation.
84 * Many bugs were fixed.
86 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
87 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.10.0):
88 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
90 * The source is converted to cweb, and split into a library part
91 (mpdir/lib/*.w) and a frontend executable (mpdir/mpost.w).
93 * The front end executable is named "newmpost", this takes
94 care of configuring the MPlib library via C code, and uses
95 kpathsea for file searching. There is no change file involved,
96 and the web2c runtime library is not used.
98 * Some of the internal arrays now grow dynamically when needed:
101 * the string pool and number of strings
102 * the font memory and number of fonts
103 * the number of "readfrom" and "write" files
104 * the path segment size
105 * the input nesting stack
106 * the number of new internals
107 * the TFM writing arrays (but these are limited by TFM format)
109 Still not doing that (so these can only be changed in --ini mode):
113 * the number of simultaneous macro parameters
114 * the level of "input" file nesting
116 * The following command-line options are ignored by the front-end
119 -[no-]file-line-error
122 -[no-]parse-first-line
128 The other web2c command-line options should work as normal.
130 * the mpware tools are not in this distribution, their functionality
131 will eventually be assimilated into the frontend application.
133 * the build process depends on a local "ctangle" command being in the
134 path, for now. The confiration and building system is not yet complete.
136 * API documentation is still missing, but the MetaPost input language
139 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
140 What is new in version 1.002:
141 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
143 * Version 1.001 introduced a memory allocation error in mpto that could
144 result in the program looping endlessly
146 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
147 What is new in version 1.001:
148 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
150 * The default cmyk 'black' color now uses only black, not all four
151 ink colors (after a discussion on the mailing list).
153 * Some issues were reported with the new turningnumber algorithm,
154 all known problems are now fixed.
156 * Gábor Braun discovered that mpost did not always download the font
157 encodings into all the created output files.
159 * Akira Kakuto and Hartmut Henkel found some small issues in mpto
160 regarding trailing and leading whitespace.
162 * A fix for the 'Helvetica' entries in trfonts.map was provided by
163 Werner Lemberg, and Michail Vidiassov supplied two extra font
164 entries for troff.map (Symbol and ZapfDingbats). Karl Berry
165 provided the new file troff-updmap.map, to be used by the updmap
168 * Mpost now supports web2c's --output-directory option.
170 * Any warnings about missing fonts and characters are now always
171 written to the terminal as well as to the log.
173 * Now that makempx is a C program, it needed a different install line
174 in build.sh. Also, Olaf Mersmann contributed a patch to recognize
177 * Luigi Scarso found some typing errors in the web source that prevented
178 clean weaving of the source.
180 * Stephan Hennig fixed a number of problems in the manual (mpman.tex)
181 and the introduction paper (mpintro.tex). He also wrote new sections on
182 how to preview metapost graphics and on how to use metapost graphics
183 inside other documents. On top of that, the manual is now hypertext-aware,
184 and fixes for a whole series of small problems have been applied.
186 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
187 What is new in version 1.000:
188 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
190 * The use of DSC (document structuring) comments has been
191 been cleaned up, thanks to comments by Michail Vidiassov.
193 * By setting prologues to 2 or 3, you can ask MetaPost to
194 reencode and include the used labels fonts in the output,
195 thus creating proper Encapsulated PostScript files even
196 if labels are present.
198 * Support for greyscale and cmykcolor models is added.
200 * The new drawing options "withprescript" and withpostscript"
201 allow the user to attach PostSCript special text to a specific
204 * Setting the new internal "mpprocset" to 1 will make MetaPost
205 create a somewhat extended preamble that defines shortcuts
206 for the postscript commands (e..g "l" instead of "lineto").
207 For big images, this can help shrink the output a bit.
209 * The pool file is now integrated in the executable, so there
210 is not separate 'mp.pool' anymore, except at build time.
212 * Groff support is redone, and dmp now uses kpathsea searching.
213 Groff related changes are thanks to the efforts of Werner
214 Lemberg and Michail Vidiassov
216 * makempx is now a compiled executable on all systems,
217 thank you Akira Kakuto
219 * The error for 'special's longer then 255 characters
220 is removed, so specials can now be of any length.
222 * There is new turningnumber implementation that attempts
223 to find the mathematically correct "turningnumber" of a
224 path. The formulae are derived from a mailinglist discussion
225 between (especially) Dan Luecking and Giuseppe Bilotta.
227 * The manual is updated and modernized. It is currently
228 maintained by Stephan Hennig and Troy Henderson.
230 ------------------------------------------------------------------
231 Changes in version 0.920:
232 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
234 * Fixed a long-standing bug in web2c where changing values of the
235 memory_size setting in web2c could cause crashes and other random
236 problems. The memory array size is now written to the dump file
237 and loading is aborted if the values do not match.
238 * Implement configurable figure output filename templates.
239 * Implement cmyk, greyscale, and marking only color models.
240 * The mpost executable is now version 0.920
242 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
243 Changes in version 0.902:
244 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
245 * Fix a bug in mpto resulting in correctly placed labels (with
246 thanks to Dan Luecking)
247 * Fix a bug blocking compilation of dmp on MacOSX
248 * The mpost,dmp,mpto executables are now version 0.902
251 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
252 Changes in version 0.901:
253 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
254 * A corrected bugfix for bug item 3 from version 0.9 (the old fix
255 made metapost fail the trap test)
256 * Included mpost.mp for mem generation
257 * Updated the trap test output.
258 * The mpost executable is now version 0.901
260 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
261 What is new in version 0.9:
262 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
263 1. There is a new internal quantity called mpversion that reports the
264 current metapost version, and the version information is also written
265 to the PostScript file.
266 2. The LaTeX sources of the mpman, mpintro, and mpgraph manuals have
267 become part of the distribution package.
268 3. TEX.mp now has TeX format support through a pair of macros called
269 TEXPRE() and TEXPOST(). This llows you to process the contents of
270 the TEX() macro with, for example, LaTeX (instead of plain TeX).
271 An example is given in the manual.
272 4. metapost now writes a %%HiReSBoundingBox comment
273 5. The EPS output no longer contains actual spaces within PostScript
274 strings as for example output by label("a space"), but their
275 octal escape (\040) instead.
276 6. The EPS output now also has a %%BeginProlog DSC comment
277 as well as %%EndProlog
278 7. The comments in the Web source have been changed to point out
279 that on modern machines, acquiring the random seed has actually
280 become a system-dependant operation (a granularity of whole seconds
281 is not small enough on new machines).
282 8. The 'newer' command now accepts more than 2 arguments, testing
283 each of the files in turn.
285 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
286 Bugfixes in version 0.9:
287 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
288 1. Documentation improvements: all known errata and typos have been
289 removed, better explanations of e.g. dash patterns and dotlabel have
290 been provided, and a number of omissions has been rectified.
291 2. The BoundingBox was not computed correctly when a filldraw command
292 with a noticeable pen size was used at the edge of the picture.
293 3. Paths starting with degenerate constructions like (0,0)--(0,0)--(0,0)
294 could overflow memory.
295 4. The PostScript output could accidentally contain 8-bit characters
296 within PostScript strings in previous versions because a test was
297 shared between terminal printing and PostScript printing.
298 5. A bug has been found in the assignment of serial numbers to independant
299 variables in metafont 2.71828. This bug affected MP as well, and the
300 same patch has been applied.
301 6. The turningnumber was sometimes wrong in unexpected ways. The new
302 implementation is still sometimes wrong (when there are strange path
303 segments involved), but in a much more predictable way: the new code
304 always draws straight lines between the actual points, and calculates
305 the turningnumber based on that path instead of the actual path. The
306 effect is that cusps and loops within segments are now completely
307 ignored. A more thorough fix of turningnumber is planned for the
309 7. There was an 'off by one' error in dvitomp wrt. the interpretation
311 8. mpto uses a new TeX macro for the generation of labels, making it
312 more robust wrt. strange user code within the actual label text.
313 9. A missing colon in boxes.mp has been added
314 10. A missing save in mfplain.mp has been added
315 11. The generisize in boxes.mp has been fixed so that it now accepts [[ as
316 a valid variable name
318 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
320 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
321 The only change was to fix the code for transforming a picture that
322 contains a filldraw. Version 0.64 introduced a bug that caused an
323 inappropriate memory reference in that case.
325 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
326 What is new in Version 0.64:
327 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
328 1. A new primitive command closefrom filename closes a readfrom file
329 so that subsequent calls to readfrom with that file name will go back
330 to the beginning of the file.
331 2. The ^^ notation for unprintable characters is now used only when printing
332 on the terminal or the log file. Internal computations and the write
333 command are all 8-bit clean. (This is partly due to material in mp.ch
334 that changes the initialization of the xchr array. Without these
335 system-dependent changes, the write command would map all non-ascii
336 characters to spaces.)
337 3. Arithmetic overflow during a comparison such as 20000>-20000 is now
338 ignored. This avoids extraneous error message when using the graph.mp
340 4. Transformations with negative determinants now work properly on pictures
341 drawn with polygonal pens.
342 5. When the readfrom operator is applied to a file that does not exist,
343 an attempt to close a non-open file could cause problems in some
344 implementations. This has now been fixed.
345 6. Using draw picture_expression withpen where the picture_expression
346 was a scaled picture containing dashed lines, the dash lengths would
347 change. This bug has been fixed.
348 7. The dashpart operator could return an invalid picture or a picture that
349 is not properly scaled. This has also been fixed.
350 8. The |char_base| variable could become negative when using fonts that
351 do not start at character 0. There was also bad Pascal code in function
352 b_open_in. This has all been fixed.
353 9. Dvitomp has been fixed to avoid a font data structure problem that
354 could cause some characters to come out in the wrong font when you
355 mix virtual and non-virtual fonts.
356 10. Dvitomp now correctly prints font names when there is a checksum
357 mismatch, and it aborts instead of just printing an error if a tfm
359 11. In plain.mp, the drawdblarrow macro now uses filldraw so that it works
360 better with large pen sizes.
362 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
364 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
365 When prologues is negative, the output files use full precision for
366 coordinates in "%%BoundingBox" comments. In btex..etex blocks,
367 "number too large" and "invalid character" errors are suppressed.
368 The result of btex..etex is now guaranteed to be in a setbounds path
369 so that a for...within iteration will always treat it as a unit.
371 There are also some obscure bug fixes involving string compaction when
372 scanning a file name or when mp is compiled in debug mode. Some possible
373 identifier name conflicts and range check errors have also been fixed.
376 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
378 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
379 This version fixes an obscure bug that could cause certain perfectly valid
380 strings to be printed as "???" or " NONEXISTENT". It also includes a minor
381 fix to the PATHEXPAND code that prevents running out of file descriptors.
384 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
385 What is new in Version 0.63:
386 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
387 1. Backslashes in the PostScript output are rendered correctly. They used
388 to come out as (\) instead of (\\).
389 2. Recycling an independent variable should no longer cause spurious overflows.
390 (This bug was recently found in mf.web.)
391 3. Pythagorean addition should now be faster in certain trivial cases.
392 4. Rotating text by arbitrary angles should no longer cause bad PostScript
393 output. The problem was that arguments to "fshow" could be inaccurate.
394 5. Obscure bugs inherited from mf.web are now fixed. These involve
395 balancing parentheses showing on the terminal, reporting the correct
396 line number in case of buffer overflow, and removing spurious reference
397 counts that could effect end-of-job statistics.
398 6. Fonts with ec=255 should no longer cause mp's PostScript output routines
400 7. When mp's string mechanism was heavily used, file names could occaisonally
401 be printed on the terminal and log file as "(?)". This has been fixed.
402 8. Setting PATHEXPAND in site.h causes mp, dvitomp and dmp to understand "//"
403 in path variables as "search multiple levels of subdirectories". This is
404 for compatibility with recent versions of the Web2c TeX distribution.
405 9. A typo in mpware/makempx and mpware/troffmpx has been fixed. Previous
406 versions of these scripts would not run on some systems.
407 10. Data files *.d have been added to the doc directory. These are used by
408 doc/mpgraph.mp which generates figures for "Drawing Graphs with MetaPost".
409 11. Typos in mpintro.tex and mp.web's TeX material have been fixed.
410 12. Files examples.mp, mpintro.tex and mpintro.bib have moved from mplib to
412 13. The author's email address now appears in the README file.
415 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
416 Macros added to the mplib directory between Versions 0.50 and 0.62:
417 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
418 rboxes.mp is a slightly more general version of boxes.mp
419 TEX.mp provides a way of running tex dynamically instead of as a pre-processor
420 graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp are documented in doc/mpgraph.ps
421 (This is the same as ftp://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/cs/cstr/164.ps.Z)
422 marith.mp, string.mp, texnum.mp, and troffnum.mp are low-level packages
423 used by graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp.
426 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
427 Other minor bug fixes subsequent to Version 0.60
428 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
429 1. plain.mp has been fixed so that the x**y works properly when x<0 and y is
431 2. Programs mptotex.c and mptotr.c which extract btex..etex material have been
432 fixed so they work properly with input files that do not end with a newline
434 3. Program dmp.c which handles troff output from btex..etex blocks has been
435 modified to avoid outputting any non-ASCII characters that the C function
437 4. Program dmp.c no longer gets troff graphics specials confused with text.
438 This seldom matters because btex..etex blocks are unlikely to contain
440 5. Pictures containing clipped subpictures could come out with some colors
441 in the subpicture wrong.
442 6. Colors in PostSript output were not being restricted to the standard 0..1
444 7. Transforming a path or a pen should no longer generate extraneous overflow
445 errors in certain unusual situations.
446 8. Drawing with a degenerate 2-vertex polygonal pen such as penrazor should
447 no longer cause an infinite loop in certain unusual situations.
448 9. There were some bugs in the mfplain macros. (These macros are designed
449 to similate plain METAFONT.) The drawing and filling macros now apply
450 currenttransform to the path but not the pen rather than vice versa.
451 The predefined modes now set o_correction to 1.0.
452 10. For security reasons, mp can no longer read or write files whose names
456 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
457 Changes to the MetaPost language between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
458 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
459 1. New operator `readfrom <filename>' and new command
460 `write <string expression> to <filename>' do file I/O. Plain defines
461 a special string EOF that readfrom returns to indicate end-of-file
462 and write..to understands as well.
463 2. New iteration type `for p within <picture expression>: <loop text> endfor'
464 iterates through the interior components of the picture. An `interior
465 component' is a single pen stroke, filled outline, or piece of typeset
466 text. A part of the picture enclosed in a clipping or setbounds path
467 also counts as an interior component. If the whole picture is enclosed
468 in such a path, the for..within iteration looks inside. Note that a
469 picture generated by btex..etex is enclosed in a setbounds path.
470 3. The length operator now applies to pictures. It returns the number of
472 4. New boolean operators stroked, filled, textual, clipped, bounded test
473 the first component of a picture. A picture enclosed in a clipping or
474 setbounds path counts as a single component.
475 5. Part extraction operators now work for pictures. Standard operators
476 redpart, greenpart, bluepart apply to the color of the first component
477 and xpart, ypart, xxpart, xypart, yxpart, yypart extract parts of the
478 tranformation that has been applied to a text component. If `textual p'
479 is false, the transform components are all zero; if `clipped p' or
480 `bounded p' is true, the color parts are all zero. Additional operators
481 fontpart, textpart, pathpart, penpart, dashpart extract other information
482 from the first component of a picture. They all return null values when
483 the first component has the wrong type: fontpart and textpart return
484 null strings; pathpart returns the path (0,0); penpart returns nullpen;
485 and dashpart returns nullpicture.
486 6. The construction `dashed nullpicture' is now a no-op. It used to be
488 7. The clip and setbounds statements used to ignore operations on empty
489 pictures. Now they do not.
490 8. Structuring comments in the PostScript output are now based on EPSF-3.0
491 as described in the 2nd Edition of the PostScript Reference Manual.
492 When prologues is 0, some structuring comments are included but the
493 output is not flagged a `conforming document'. Previous versions of
494 MetaPost behaved similarly but used slightly different structuring
496 9. When warningcheck is 0, numeric tokens and results from the hex and
497 oct operators can be as large as 32767.99998. The old limit of about
498 4096 applies only when warningcheck is positive.
499 10. Various optimizations should make the output a little more compact.
500 11. For PostScript engines that obey the scan-conversion rules documented
501 in the 2nd edition PostScript Language Reference Manual, hrules and
502 vrules in btex..etex blocks should now come out to exactly the right
503 number of pixels. The change affects all pen strokes drawn in MetaPost
504 It is implemented via PostScripts dtransform and idtransform operators.
505 12. A bug involving setbounds and MetaPost's corner operators has been fixed.
506 13. Degenerate elliptical pens no longer cause PostScript to divide by zero.
507 14. Fixed a very obscure bug involving readstring and end-of-file.
508 15. String compaction statistics are now printed correctly when the job
509 terminates with tracingstats positive.
513 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
514 Changes to the source files between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
515 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
517 CHANGES to ./README.MP
518 The installation instructions should now be clearer. They also explain
519 how to cope with verious versions of WEB2C.
522 I removed unused entries and clarified instructions in commentary material.
523 Confusing comments about possibly merging it with the WEB2C version of site.h
524 were removed--I think such merging is a bad idea.
526 CHANGES TO ./Makefile, mp/Makefile, mpware/Makefile:
527 Improved default settings, simplified the `install' recipe,
528 fixed a few missing depencies, portability problems, etc.
531 mp/mp.defines, mpware/mpware.defines, mpware/dvitompext.c
532 TO mp/mp.def, mpware/mpware.def, mpware/dvimpext.c
533 (The names also changed in the Makefiles and convert scripts)
535 CHANGES TO mp/mp.web, mp/mp.ch, mp/mp.def, mp/mpext.c:
536 Lots of new features were added as noted above. The only new system-
537 dependencies are for `readfrom' and `write...to'.
538 The change file now increases max_read_files; it doesn't bother with
539 max_write_files, but perhaps it should. There is a new change entitled
540 "Path selector for..readfrom file". From the web2C sources I borrowed
541 a change "`logname' is declared in <unistd.h> in some systems". I also
542 added a PASCAL-like eof() routine to mpext, removed a change entitled
543 "avoid using eof() in read_psname_table" and added a new change
544 "[48.1199] `eof'...[in read_mem_file]".
546 Reorganization of math routines in the mp directory:
547 I moved the floating-point math routines from mpext.c to mpath.c. A
548 C-language version of the standard math routines was moved from mpmath.c
549 to a new file pmath.c for use in mathtest only. This required chages to
550 mathtest.c and time.c (also used only for mathtest). The point of all
551 this is that there is now just one copy of the floating-point math routines
552 and it is used for mathtest and (optionally) for mp itself.
554 Routines in doc and mp/trapdir:
555 The output was updated to Version 0.60. Another test file mptrap.mp
556 tests new features. There have also been minor updates to the manual,
557 although the new features for Version 0.60 are not included yet.
559 CHANGES to macros in mplib:
560 A minor change to boxes.mp should make it more robust. Changed default
561 setting of tracinglostchars in mfplain.mp and plain.mp. Added a string
562 constant EOF to plain.mp for use with readfrom and write..to.
563 Changed mproof.tex to make it more portable as suggested by Knuth.
565 CHANGES to mpware/dvitomp.web, mpware/dvitomp.ch:
566 The web file was changed to output rules as horizontal or vertical
567 penstrokes with butt endcaps. This also affected dvitomp.ch. Also in
568 dvitomp.ch, put terminal output on stdout instead of stderr and require
569 the output file to be given on the command line.
571 CHANGES to mpware/makempx, mpware/troffmpx:
572 Added comments explaining what path names need fixing. Portability improvements
573 and dvitomp's output change affect makempx only.
575 CHANGES to mpware/mptotex.c mpware/mptotr.c mpware/testex.err mpware/testex.mp:
576 Ignore an initial newline in the TeX (or troff) material to avoid generating
577 a blank line in the output file. The test file now covers this case.
579 CHANGE to mpware/newer.c
580 Minor changes to make it compile in strict ANSI/POSIX environments.