2 This file is public domain.
4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
5 What is new in the beta release of MPlib 1.080:
6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8 * The MPlib distribution is released under the GPL version 2 or, at
9 your option, any later version. The copyright statements in the source
10 files have been updated to reflect this.
12 * The mpost program banner now contains the kpathsea version, and no
13 longer mentions the fact that the source is now cweb at all.
15 * The mpost program once again supports 'E' error responses.
17 * There are some minor internal API changes, but there is still no
18 documentation for the API, so that is not very interesting yet.
21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
22 What is new in the beta release of MPlib 1.060:
23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
25 * The MPlib distribution is released under the GPL version 2.
27 * This release is the first that replaces the old metapost distribution
28 completely. The executable is now named 'mpost' with engine name
31 * The release now includes a cweb implementation of the makempx
32 functionality that is linked into the mpost executable.
33 This internal code will be used unless the MPXCOMMAND variable is set.
34 Because of this functionality, the mpware directory is no longer
35 included and the standalone programs 'makempx', 'newer', 'mpto',
36 'dvitomp' and 'dmp'. are no longer maintained.
38 * This is the first development release of the new cycle, and contains
39 all of the functionality of Metapost 1.005. The mpost version is now
40 1.060, and the special version number for the cweb version has been
41 removed from the banner.
43 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
44 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.20.0):
45 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
47 * Two bugs in MP 1.002 were fixed by Giuseppe Bilotta, both fixes
48 are about polygonals pens and will be included in the upcoming
49 MP 1.003 release also.
51 * It is now possible to ask for the envelope of a path drawn as
52 traced by a (non-elliptical) pen:
55 p = fullcircle scaled 30;
56 q = envelope pensquare of p;
58 * There is a lua interface now, and it is already used by luatex.
60 To play with this, currently the best solution is to fetch the
61 0.25.0 beta of luatex: http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/luatex
62 This embeds MPlib 0.25.0 as well as its documentation.
64 * Many bugs were fixed.
66 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
67 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.10.0):
68 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
70 * The source is converted to cweb, and split into a library part
71 (mpdir/lib/*.w) and a frontend executable (mpdir/mpost.w).
73 * The front end executable is named "newmpost", this takes
74 care of configuring the MPlib library via C code, and uses
75 kpathsea for file searching. There is no change file involved,
76 and the web2c runtime library is not used.
78 * Some of the internal arrays now grow dynamically when needed:
81 * the string pool and number of strings
82 * the font memory and number of fonts
83 * the number of "readfrom" and "write" files
84 * the path segment size
85 * the input nesting stack
86 * the number of new internals
87 * the TFM writing arrays (but these are limited by TFM format)
89 Still not doing that (so these can only be changed in --ini mode):
93 * the number of simultaneous macro parameters
94 * the level of "input" file nesting
96 * The following command-line options are ignored by the front-end
102 -[no-]parse-first-line
108 The other web2c command-line options should work as normal.
110 * the mpware tools are not in this distribution, their functionality
111 will eventually be assimilated into the frontend application.
113 * the build process depends on a local "ctangle" command being in the
114 path, for now. The confiration and building system is not yet complete.
116 * API documentation is still missing, but the MetaPost input language
119 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
120 What is new in version 1.002:
121 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
123 * Version 1.001 introduced a memory allocation error in mpto that could
124 result in the program looping endlessly
126 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
127 What is new in version 1.001:
128 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
130 * The default cmyk 'black' color now uses only black, not all four
131 ink colors (after a discussion on the mailing list).
133 * Some issues were reported with the new turningnumber algorithm,
134 all known problems are now fixed.
136 * Gábor Braun discovered that mpost did not always download the font
137 encodings into all the created output files.
139 * Akira Kakuto and Hartmut Henkel found some small issues in mpto
140 regarding trailing and leading whitespace.
142 * A fix for the 'Helvetica' entries in trfonts.map was provided by
143 Werner Lemberg, and Michail Vidiassov supplied two extra font
144 entries for troff.map (Symbol and ZapfDingbats). Karl Berry
145 provided the new file troff-updmap.map, to be used by the updmap
148 * Mpost now supports web2c's --output-directory option.
150 * Any warnings about missing fonts and characters are now always
151 written to the terminal as well as to the log.
153 * Now that makempx is a C program, it needed a different install line
154 in build.sh. Also, Olaf Mersmann contributed a patch to recognize
157 * Luigi Scarso found some typing errors in the web source that prevented
158 clean weaving of the source.
160 * Stephan Hennig fixed a number of problems in the manual (mpman.tex)
161 and the introduction paper (mpintro.tex). He also wrote new sections on
162 how to preview metapost graphics and on how to use metapost graphics
163 inside other documents. On top of that, the manual is now hypertext-aware,
164 and fixes for a whole series of small problems have been applied.
166 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
167 What is new in version 1.000:
168 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
170 * The use of DSC (document structuring) comments has been
171 been cleaned up, thanks to comments by Michail Vidiassov.
173 * By setting prologues to 2 or 3, you can ask MetaPost to
174 reencode and include the used labels fonts in the output,
175 thus creating proper Encapsulated PostScript files even
176 if labels are present.
178 * Support for greyscale and cmykcolor models is added.
180 * The new drawing options "withprescript" and withpostscript"
181 allow the user to attach PostSCript special text to a specific
184 * Setting the new internal "mpprocset" to 1 will make MetaPost
185 create a somewhat extended preamble that defines shortcuts
186 for the postscript commands (e..g "l" instead of "lineto").
187 For big images, this can help shrink the output a bit.
189 * The pool file is now integrated in the executable, so there
190 is not separate 'mp.pool' anymore, except at build time.
192 * Groff support is redone, and dmp now uses kpathsea searching.
193 Groff related changes are thanks to the efforts of Werner
194 Lemberg and Michail Vidiassov
196 * makempx is now a compiled executable on all systems,
197 thank you Akira Kakuto
199 * The error for 'special's longer then 255 characters
200 is removed, so specials can now be of any length.
202 * There is new turningnumber implementation that attempts
203 to find the mathematically correct "turningnumber" of a
204 path. The formulae are derived from a mailinglist discussion
205 between (especially) Dan Luecking and Giuseppe Bilotta.
207 * The manual is updated and modernized. It is currently
208 maintained by Stephan Hennig and Troy Henderson.
210 ------------------------------------------------------------------
211 Changes in version 0.920:
212 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
214 * Fixed a long-standing bug in web2c where changing values of the
215 memory_size setting in web2c could cause crashes and other random
216 problems. The memory array size is now written to the dump file
217 and loading is aborted if the values do not match.
218 * Implement configurable figure output filename templates.
219 * Implement cmyk, greyscale, and marking only color models.
220 * The mpost executable is now version 0.920
222 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
223 Changes in version 0.902:
224 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
225 * Fix a bug in mpto resulting in correctly placed labels (with
226 thanks to Dan Luecking)
227 * Fix a bug blocking compilation of dmp on MacOSX
228 * The mpost,dmp,mpto executables are now version 0.902
231 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
232 Changes in version 0.901:
233 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
234 * A corrected bugfix for bug item 3 from version 0.9 (the old fix
235 made metapost fail the trap test)
236 * Included mpost.mp for mem generation
237 * Updated the trap test output.
238 * The mpost executable is now version 0.901
240 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
241 What is new in version 0.9:
242 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
243 1. There is a new internal quantity called mpversion that reports the
244 current metapost version, and the version information is also written
245 to the PostScript file.
246 2. The LaTeX sources of the mpman, mpintro, and mpgraph manuals have
247 become part of the distribution package.
248 3. TEX.mp now has TeX format support through a pair of macros called
249 TEXPRE() and TEXPOST(). This llows you to process the contents of
250 the TEX() macro with, for example, LaTeX (instead of plain TeX).
251 An example is given in the manual.
252 4. metapost now writes a %%HiReSBoundingBox comment
253 5. The EPS output no longer contains actual spaces within PostScript
254 strings as for example output by label("a space"), but their
255 octal escape (\040) instead.
256 6. The EPS output now also has a %%BeginProlog DSC comment
257 as well as %%EndProlog
258 7. The comments in the Web source have been changed to point out
259 that on modern machines, acquiring the random seed has actually
260 become a system-dependant operation (a granularity of whole seconds
261 is not small enough on new machines).
262 8. The 'newer' command now accepts more than 2 arguments, testing
263 each of the files in turn.
265 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
266 Bugfixes in version 0.9:
267 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
268 1. Documentation improvements: all known errata and typos have been
269 removed, better explanations of e.g. dash patterns and dotlabel have
270 been provided, and a number of omissions has been rectified.
271 2. The BoundingBox was not computed correctly when a filldraw command
272 with a noticeable pen size was used at the edge of the picture.
273 3. Paths starting with degenerate constructions like (0,0)--(0,0)--(0,0)
274 could overflow memory.
275 4. The PostScript output could accidentally contain 8-bit characters
276 within PostScript strings in previous versions because a test was
277 shared between terminal printing and PostScript printing.
278 5. A bug has been found in the assignment of serial numbers to independant
279 variables in metafont 2.71828. This bug affected MP as well, and the
280 same patch has been applied.
281 6. The turningnumber was sometimes wrong in unexpected ways. The new
282 implementation is still sometimes wrong (when there are strange path
283 segments involved), but in a much more predictable way: the new code
284 always draws straight lines between the actual points, and calculates
285 the turningnumber based on that path instead of the actual path. The
286 effect is that cusps and loops within segments are now completely
287 ignored. A more thorough fix of turningnumber is planned for the
289 7. There was an 'off by one' error in dvitomp wrt. the interpretation
291 8. mpto uses a new TeX macro for the generation of labels, making it
292 more robust wrt. strange user code within the actual label text.
293 9. A missing colon in boxes.mp has been added
294 10. A missing save in mfplain.mp has been added
295 11. The generisize in boxes.mp has been fixed so that it now accepts [[ as
296 a valid variable name
298 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
300 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
301 The only change was to fix the code for transforming a picture that
302 contains a filldraw. Version 0.64 introduced a bug that caused an
303 inappropriate memory reference in that case.
305 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
306 What is new in Version 0.64:
307 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
308 1. A new primitive command closefrom filename closes a readfrom file
309 so that subsequent calls to readfrom with that file name will go back
310 to the beginning of the file.
311 2. The ^^ notation for unprintable characters is now used only when printing
312 on the terminal or the log file. Internal computations and the write
313 command are all 8-bit clean. (This is partly due to material in mp.ch
314 that changes the initialization of the xchr array. Without these
315 system-dependent changes, the write command would map all non-ascii
316 characters to spaces.)
317 3. Arithmetic overflow during a comparison such as 20000>-20000 is now
318 ignored. This avoids extraneous error message when using the graph.mp
320 4. Transformations with negative determinants now work properly on pictures
321 drawn with polygonal pens.
322 5. When the readfrom operator is applied to a file that does not exist,
323 an attempt to close a non-open file could cause problems in some
324 implementations. This has now been fixed.
325 6. Using draw picture_expression withpen where the picture_expression
326 was a scaled picture containing dashed lines, the dash lengths would
327 change. This bug has been fixed.
328 7. The dashpart operator could return an invalid picture or a picture that
329 is not properly scaled. This has also been fixed.
330 8. The |char_base| variable could become negative when using fonts that
331 do not start at character 0. There was also bad Pascal code in function
332 b_open_in. This has all been fixed.
333 9. Dvitomp has been fixed to avoid a font data structure problem that
334 could cause some characters to come out in the wrong font when you
335 mix virtual and non-virtual fonts.
336 10. Dvitomp now correctly prints font names when there is a checksum
337 mismatch, and it aborts instead of just printing an error if a tfm
339 11. In plain.mp, the drawdblarrow macro now uses filldraw so that it works
340 better with large pen sizes.
342 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
344 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
345 When prologues is negative, the output files use full precision for
346 coordinates in "%%BoundingBox" comments. In btex..etex blocks,
347 "number too large" and "invalid character" errors are suppressed.
348 The result of btex..etex is now guaranteed to be in a setbounds path
349 so that a for...within iteration will always treat it as a unit.
351 There are also some obscure bug fixes involving string compaction when
352 scanning a file name or when mp is compiled in debug mode. Some possible
353 identifier name conflicts and range check errors have also been fixed.
356 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
358 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
359 This version fixes an obscure bug that could cause certain perfectly valid
360 strings to be printed as "???" or " NONEXISTENT". It also includes a minor
361 fix to the PATHEXPAND code that prevents running out of file descriptors.
364 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
365 What is new in Version 0.63:
366 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
367 1. Backslashes in the PostScript output are rendered correctly. They used
368 to come out as (\) instead of (\\).
369 2. Recycling an independent variable should no longer cause spurious overflows.
370 (This bug was recently found in mf.web.)
371 3. Pythagorean addition should now be faster in certain trivial cases.
372 4. Rotating text by arbitrary angles should no longer cause bad PostScript
373 output. The problem was that arguments to "fshow" could be inaccurate.
374 5. Obscure bugs inherited from mf.web are now fixed. These involve
375 balancing parentheses showing on the terminal, reporting the correct
376 line number in case of buffer overflow, and removing spurious reference
377 counts that could effect end-of-job statistics.
378 6. Fonts with ec=255 should no longer cause mp's PostScript output routines
380 7. When mp's string mechanism was heavily used, file names could occaisonally
381 be printed on the terminal and log file as "(?)". This has been fixed.
382 8. Setting PATHEXPAND in site.h causes mp, dvitomp and dmp to understand "//"
383 in path variables as "search multiple levels of subdirectories". This is
384 for compatibility with recent versions of the Web2c TeX distribution.
385 9. A typo in mpware/makempx and mpware/troffmpx has been fixed. Previous
386 versions of these scripts would not run on some systems.
387 10. Data files *.d have been added to the doc directory. These are used by
388 doc/mpgraph.mp which generates figures for "Drawing Graphs with MetaPost".
389 11. Typos in mpintro.tex and mp.web's TeX material have been fixed.
390 12. Files examples.mp, mpintro.tex and mpintro.bib have moved from mplib to
392 13. The author's email address now appears in the README file.
395 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
396 Macros added to the mplib directory between Versions 0.50 and 0.62:
397 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
398 rboxes.mp is a slightly more general version of boxes.mp
399 TEX.mp provides a way of running tex dynamically instead of as a pre-processor
400 graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp are documented in doc/mpgraph.ps
401 (This is the same as ftp://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/cs/cstr/164.ps.Z)
402 marith.mp, string.mp, texnum.mp, and troffnum.mp are low-level packages
403 used by graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp.
406 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
407 Other minor bug fixes subsequent to Version 0.60
408 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
409 1. plain.mp has been fixed so that the x**y works properly when x<0 and y is
411 2. Programs mptotex.c and mptotr.c which extract btex..etex material have been
412 fixed so they work properly with input files that do not end with a newline
414 3. Program dmp.c which handles troff output from btex..etex blocks has been
415 modified to avoid outputting any non-ASCII characters that the C function
417 4. Program dmp.c no longer gets troff graphics specials confused with text.
418 This seldom matters because btex..etex blocks are unlikely to contain
420 5. Pictures containing clipped subpictures could come out with some colors
421 in the subpicture wrong.
422 6. Colors in PostSript output were not being restricted to the standard 0..1
424 7. Transforming a path or a pen should no longer generate extraneous overflow
425 errors in certain unusual situations.
426 8. Drawing with a degenerate 2-vertex polygonal pen such as penrazor should
427 no longer cause an infinite loop in certain unusual situations.
428 9. There were some bugs in the mfplain macros. (These macros are designed
429 to similate plain METAFONT.) The drawing and filling macros now apply
430 currenttransform to the path but not the pen rather than vice versa.
431 The predefined modes now set o_correction to 1.0.
432 10. For security reasons, mp can no longer read or write files whose names
436 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
437 Changes to the MetaPost language between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
438 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
439 1. New operator `readfrom <filename>' and new command
440 `write <string expression> to <filename>' do file I/O. Plain defines
441 a special string EOF that readfrom returns to indicate end-of-file
442 and write..to understands as well.
443 2. New iteration type `for p within <picture expression>: <loop text> endfor'
444 iterates through the interior components of the picture. An `interior
445 component' is a single pen stroke, filled outline, or piece of typeset
446 text. A part of the picture enclosed in a clipping or setbounds path
447 also counts as an interior component. If the whole picture is enclosed
448 in such a path, the for..within iteration looks inside. Note that a
449 picture generated by btex..etex is enclosed in a setbounds path.
450 3. The length operator now applies to pictures. It returns the number of
452 4. New boolean operators stroked, filled, textual, clipped, bounded test
453 the first component of a picture. A picture enclosed in a clipping or
454 setbounds path counts as a single component.
455 5. Part extraction operators now work for pictures. Standard operators
456 redpart, greenpart, bluepart apply to the color of the first component
457 and xpart, ypart, xxpart, xypart, yxpart, yypart extract parts of the
458 tranformation that has been applied to a text component. If `textual p'
459 is false, the transform components are all zero; if `clipped p' or
460 `bounded p' is true, the color parts are all zero. Additional operators
461 fontpart, textpart, pathpart, penpart, dashpart extract other information
462 from the first component of a picture. They all return null values when
463 the first component has the wrong type: fontpart and textpart return
464 null strings; pathpart returns the path (0,0); penpart returns nullpen;
465 and dashpart returns nullpicture.
466 6. The construction `dashed nullpicture' is now a no-op. It used to be
468 7. The clip and setbounds statements used to ignore operations on empty
469 pictures. Now they do not.
470 8. Structuring comments in the PostScript output are now based on EPSF-3.0
471 as described in the 2nd Edition of the PostScript Reference Manual.
472 When prologues is 0, some structuring comments are included but the
473 output is not flagged a `conforming document'. Previous versions of
474 MetaPost behaved similarly but used slightly different structuring
476 9. When warningcheck is 0, numeric tokens and results from the hex and
477 oct operators can be as large as 32767.99998. The old limit of about
478 4096 applies only when warningcheck is positive.
479 10. Various optimizations should make the output a little more compact.
480 11. For PostScript engines that obey the scan-conversion rules documented
481 in the 2nd edition PostScript Language Reference Manual, hrules and
482 vrules in btex..etex blocks should now come out to exactly the right
483 number of pixels. The change affects all pen strokes drawn in MetaPost
484 It is implemented via PostScripts dtransform and idtransform operators.
485 12. A bug involving setbounds and MetaPost's corner operators has been fixed.
486 13. Degenerate elliptical pens no longer cause PostScript to divide by zero.
487 14. Fixed a very obscure bug involving readstring and end-of-file.
488 15. String compaction statistics are now printed correctly when the job
489 terminates with tracingstats positive.
493 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
494 Changes to the source files between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
495 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
497 CHANGES to ./README.MP
498 The installation instructions should now be clearer. They also explain
499 how to cope with verious versions of WEB2C.
502 I removed unused entries and clarified instructions in commentary material.
503 Confusing comments about possibly merging it with the WEB2C version of site.h
504 were removed--I think such merging is a bad idea.
506 CHANGES TO ./Makefile, mp/Makefile, mpware/Makefile:
507 Improved default settings, simplified the `install' recipe,
508 fixed a few missing depencies, portability problems, etc.
511 mp/mp.defines, mpware/mpware.defines, mpware/dvitompext.c
512 TO mp/mp.def, mpware/mpware.def, mpware/dvimpext.c
513 (The names also changed in the Makefiles and convert scripts)
515 CHANGES TO mp/mp.web, mp/mp.ch, mp/mp.def, mp/mpext.c:
516 Lots of new features were added as noted above. The only new system-
517 dependencies are for `readfrom' and `write...to'.
518 The change file now increases max_read_files; it doesn't bother with
519 max_write_files, but perhaps it should. There is a new change entitled
520 "Path selector for..readfrom file". From the web2C sources I borrowed
521 a change "`logname' is declared in <unistd.h> in some systems". I also
522 added a PASCAL-like eof() routine to mpext, removed a change entitled
523 "avoid using eof() in read_psname_table" and added a new change
524 "[48.1199] `eof'...[in read_mem_file]".
526 Reorganization of math routines in the mp directory:
527 I moved the floating-point math routines from mpext.c to mpath.c. A
528 C-language version of the standard math routines was moved from mpmath.c
529 to a new file pmath.c for use in mathtest only. This required chages to
530 mathtest.c and time.c (also used only for mathtest). The point of all
531 this is that there is now just one copy of the floating-point math routines
532 and it is used for mathtest and (optionally) for mp itself.
534 Routines in doc and mp/trapdir:
535 The output was updated to Version 0.60. Another test file mptrap.mp
536 tests new features. There have also been minor updates to the manual,
537 although the new features for Version 0.60 are not included yet.
539 CHANGES to macros in mplib:
540 A minor change to boxes.mp should make it more robust. Changed default
541 setting of tracinglostchars in mfplain.mp and plain.mp. Added a string
542 constant EOF to plain.mp for use with readfrom and write..to.
543 Changed mproof.tex to make it more portable as suggested by Knuth.
545 CHANGES to mpware/dvitomp.web, mpware/dvitomp.ch:
546 The web file was changed to output rules as horizontal or vertical
547 penstrokes with butt endcaps. This also affected dvitomp.ch. Also in
548 dvitomp.ch, put terminal output on stdout instead of stderr and require
549 the output file to be given on the command line.
551 CHANGES to mpware/makempx, mpware/troffmpx:
552 Added comments explaining what path names need fixing. Portability improvements
553 and dvitomp's output change affect makempx only.
555 CHANGES to mpware/mptotex.c mpware/mptotr.c mpware/testex.err mpware/testex.mp:
556 Ignore an initial newline in the TeX (or troff) material to avoid generating
557 a blank line in the output file. The test file now covers this case.
559 CHANGE to mpware/newer.c
560 Minor changes to make it compile in strict ANSI/POSIX environments.