2 By John Hobby and others. Public domain (see README).
4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
5 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.20.0):
6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
8 * Two bugs in MP 1.002 were fixed by Giuseppe Bilotta, both fixes
9 are about polygonals pens and will be included in the upcoming
10 MP 1.003 release also.
12 * It is now possible to ask for the envelope of a path drawn as
13 traced by a (non-elliptical) pen:
16 p = fullcircle scaled 30;
17 q = envelope pensquare of p;
19 * There is a lua interface now, and it is already used by luatex.
21 To play with this, currently the best solution is to fetch the
22 0.25.0 beta of luatex: http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/luatex
23 This embeds MPlib 0.25.0 as well as its documentation.
25 * Many bugs were fixed.
27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
28 What is new in the alpha release of MPlib (0.10.0):
29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
31 * The source is converted to cweb, and split into a library part
32 (mpdir/lib/*.w) and a frontend executable (mpdir/mpost.w).
34 * The front end executable is named "newmpost", this takes
35 care of configuring the MPlib library via C code, and uses
36 kpathsea for file searching. There is no change file involved,
37 and the web2c runtime library is not used.
39 * Some of the internal arrays now grow dynamically when needed:
42 * the string pool and number of strings
43 * the font memory and number of fonts
44 * the number of "readfrom" and "write" files
45 * the path segment size
46 * the input nesting stack
47 * the number of new internals
48 * the TFM writing arrays (but these are limited by TFM format)
50 Still not doing that (so these can only be changed in --ini mode):
54 * the number of simultaneous macro parameters
55 * the level of "input" file nesting
57 * The following command-line options are ignored by the front-end
63 -[no-]parse-first-line
69 The other web2c command-line options should work as normal.
71 * the mpware tools are not in this distribution, their functionality
72 will eventually be assimilated into the frontend application.
74 * the build process depends on a local "ctangle" command being in the
75 path, for now. The confiration and building system is not yet complete.
77 * API documentation is still missing, but the MetaPost input language
80 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
81 What is new in version 1.002:
82 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
84 * Version 1.001 introduced a memory allocation error in mpto that could
85 result in the program looping endlessly
87 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
88 What is new in version 1.001:
89 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
91 * The default cmyk 'black' color now uses only black, not all four
92 ink colors (after a discussion on the mailing list).
94 * Some issues were reported with the new turningnumber algorithm,
95 all known problems are now fixed.
97 * Gábor Braun discovered that mpost did not always download the font
98 encodings into all the created output files.
100 * Akira Kakuto and Hartmut Henkel found some small issues in mpto
101 regarding trailing and leading whitespace.
103 * A fix for the 'Helvetica' entries in trfonts.map was provided by
104 Werner Lemberg, and Michail Vidiassov supplied two extra font
105 entries for troff.map (Symbol and ZapfDingbats). Karl Berry
106 provided the new file troff-updmap.map, to be used by the updmap
109 * Mpost now supports web2c's --output-directory option.
111 * Any warnings about missing fonts and characters are now always
112 written to the terminal as well as to the log.
114 * Now that makempx is a C program, it needed a different install line
115 in build.sh. Also, Olaf Mersmann contributed a patch to recognize
118 * Luigi Scarso found some typing errors in the web source that prevented
119 clean weaving of the source.
121 * Stephan Hennig fixed a number of problems in the manual (mpman.tex)
122 and the introduction paper (mpintro.tex). He also wrote new sections on
123 how to preview metapost graphics and on how to use metapost graphics
124 inside other documents. On top of that, the manual is now hypertext-aware,
125 and fixes for a whole series of small problems have been applied.
127 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
128 What is new in version 1.000:
129 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
131 * The use of DSC (document structuring) comments has been
132 been cleaned up, thanks to comments by Michail Vidiassov.
134 * By setting prologues to 2 or 3, you can ask MetaPost to
135 reencode and include the used labels fonts in the output,
136 thus creating proper Encapsulated PostScript files even
137 if labels are present.
139 * Support for greyscale and cmykcolor models is added.
141 * The new drawing options "withprescript" and withpostscript"
142 allow the user to attach PostSCript special text to a specific
145 * Setting the new internal "mpprocset" to 1 will make MetaPost
146 create a somewhat extended preamble that defines shortcuts
147 for the postscript commands (e..g "l" instead of "lineto").
148 For big images, this can help shrink the output a bit.
150 * The pool file is now integrated in the executable, so there
151 is not separate 'mp.pool' anymore, except at build time.
153 * Groff support is redone, and dmp now uses kpathsea searching.
154 Groff related changes are thanks to the efforts of Werner
155 Lemberg and Michail Vidiassov
157 * makempx is now a compiled executable on all systems,
158 thank you Akira Kakuto
160 * The error for 'special's longer then 255 characters
161 is removed, so specials can now be of any length.
163 * There is new turningnumber implementation that attempts
164 to find the mathematically correct "turningnumber" of a
165 path. The formulae are derived from a mailinglist discussion
166 between (especially) Dan Luecking and Giuseppe Bilotta.
168 * The manual is updated and modernized. It is currently
169 maintained by Stephan Hennig and Troy Henderson.
171 ------------------------------------------------------------------
172 Changes in version 0.920:
173 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
175 * Fixed a long-standing bug in web2c where changing values of the
176 memory_size setting in web2c could cause crashes and other random
177 problems. The memory array size is now written to the dump file
178 and loading is aborted if the values do not match.
179 * Implement configurable figure output filename templates.
180 * Implement cmyk, greyscale, and marking only color models.
181 * The mpost executable is now version 0.920
183 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
184 Changes in version 0.902:
185 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
186 * Fix a bug in mpto resulting in correctly placed labels (with
187 thanks to Dan Luecking)
188 * Fix a bug blocking compilation of dmp on MacOSX
189 * The mpost,dmp,mpto executables are now version 0.902
192 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
193 Changes in version 0.901:
194 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
195 * A corrected bugfix for bug item 3 from version 0.9 (the old fix
196 made metapost fail the trap test)
197 * Included mpost.mp for mem generation
198 * Updated the trap test output.
199 * The mpost executable is now version 0.901
201 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
202 What is new in version 0.9:
203 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
204 1. There is a new internal quantity called mpversion that reports the
205 current metapost version, and the version information is also written
206 to the PostScript file.
207 2. The LaTeX sources of the mpman, mpintro, and mpgraph manuals have
208 become part of the distribution package.
209 3. TEX.mp now has TeX format support through a pair of macros called
210 TEXPRE() and TEXPOST(). This llows you to process the contents of
211 the TEX() macro with, for example, LaTeX (instead of plain TeX).
212 An example is given in the manual.
213 4. metapost now writes a %%HiReSBoundingBox comment
214 5. The EPS output no longer contains actual spaces within PostScript
215 strings as for example output by label("a space"), but their
216 octal escape (\040) instead.
217 6. The EPS output now also has a %%BeginProlog DSC comment
218 as well as %%EndProlog
219 7. The comments in the Web source have been changed to point out
220 that on modern machines, acquiring the random seed has actually
221 become a system-dependant operation (a granularity of whole seconds
222 is not small enough on new machines).
223 8. The 'newer' command now accepts more than 2 arguments, testing
224 each of the files in turn.
226 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
227 Bugfixes in version 0.9:
228 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
229 1. Documentation improvements: all known errata and typos have been
230 removed, better explanations of e.g. dash patterns and dotlabel have
231 been provided, and a number of omissions has been rectified.
232 2. The BoundingBox was not computed correctly when a filldraw command
233 with a noticeable pen size was used at the edge of the picture.
234 3. Paths starting with degenerate constructions like (0,0)--(0,0)--(0,0)
235 could overflow memory.
236 4. The PostScript output could accidentally contain 8-bit characters
237 within PostScript strings in previous versions because a test was
238 shared between terminal printing and PostScript printing.
239 5. A bug has been found in the assignment of serial numbers to independant
240 variables in metafont 2.71828. This bug affected MP as well, and the
241 same patch has been applied.
242 6. The turningnumber was sometimes wrong in unexpected ways. The new
243 implementation is still sometimes wrong (when there are strange path
244 segments involved), but in a much more predictable way: the new code
245 always draws straight lines between the actual points, and calculates
246 the turningnumber based on that path instead of the actual path. The
247 effect is that cusps and loops within segments are now completely
248 ignored. A more thorough fix of turningnumber is planned for the
250 7. There was an 'off by one' error in dvitomp wrt. the interpretation
252 8. mpto uses a new TeX macro for the generation of labels, making it
253 more robust wrt. strange user code within the actual label text.
254 9. A missing colon in boxes.mp has been added
255 10. A missing save in mfplain.mp has been added
256 11. The generisize in boxes.mp has been fixed so that it now accepts [[ as
257 a valid variable name
259 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
261 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
262 The only change was to fix the code for transforming a picture that
263 contains a filldraw. Version 0.64 introduced a bug that caused an
264 inappropriate memory reference in that case.
266 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
267 What is new in Version 0.64:
268 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
269 1. A new primitive command closefrom filename closes a readfrom file
270 so that subsequent calls to readfrom with that file name will go back
271 to the beginning of the file.
272 2. The ^^ notation for unprintable characters is now used only when printing
273 on the terminal or the log file. Internal computations and the write
274 command are all 8-bit clean. (This is partly due to material in mp.ch
275 that changes the initialization of the xchr array. Without these
276 system-dependent changes, the write command would map all non-ascii
277 characters to spaces.)
278 3. Arithmetic overflow during a comparison such as 20000>-20000 is now
279 ignored. This avoids extraneous error message when using the graph.mp
281 4. Transformations with negative determinants now work properly on pictures
282 drawn with polygonal pens.
283 5. When the readfrom operator is applied to a file that does not exist,
284 an attempt to close a non-open file could cause problems in some
285 implementations. This has now been fixed.
286 6. Using draw picture_expression withpen where the picture_expression
287 was a scaled picture containing dashed lines, the dash lengths would
288 change. This bug has been fixed.
289 7. The dashpart operator could return an invalid picture or a picture that
290 is not properly scaled. This has also been fixed.
291 8. The |char_base| variable could become negative when using fonts that
292 do not start at character 0. There was also bad Pascal code in function
293 b_open_in. This has all been fixed.
294 9. Dvitomp has been fixed to avoid a font data structure problem that
295 could cause some characters to come out in the wrong font when you
296 mix virtual and non-virtual fonts.
297 10. Dvitomp now correctly prints font names when there is a checksum
298 mismatch, and it aborts instead of just printing an error if a tfm
300 11. In plain.mp, the drawdblarrow macro now uses filldraw so that it works
301 better with large pen sizes.
303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
305 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
306 When prologues is negative, the output files use full precision for
307 coordinates in "%%BoundingBox" comments. In btex..etex blocks,
308 "number too large" and "invalid character" errors are suppressed.
309 The result of btex..etex is now guaranteed to be in a setbounds path
310 so that a for...within iteration will always treat it as a unit.
312 There are also some obscure bug fixes involving string compaction when
313 scanning a file name or when mp is compiled in debug mode. Some possible
314 identifier name conflicts and range check errors have also been fixed.
317 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
319 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
320 This version fixes an obscure bug that could cause certain perfectly valid
321 strings to be printed as "???" or " NONEXISTENT". It also includes a minor
322 fix to the PATHEXPAND code that prevents running out of file descriptors.
325 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
326 What is new in Version 0.63:
327 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
328 1. Backslashes in the PostScript output are rendered correctly. They used
329 to come out as (\) instead of (\\).
330 2. Recycling an independent variable should no longer cause spurious overflows.
331 (This bug was recently found in mf.web.)
332 3. Pythagorean addition should now be faster in certain trivial cases.
333 4. Rotating text by arbitrary angles should no longer cause bad PostScript
334 output. The problem was that arguments to "fshow" could be inaccurate.
335 5. Obscure bugs inherited from mf.web are now fixed. These involve
336 balancing parentheses showing on the terminal, reporting the correct
337 line number in case of buffer overflow, and removing spurious reference
338 counts that could effect end-of-job statistics.
339 6. Fonts with ec=255 should no longer cause mp's PostScript output routines
341 7. When mp's string mechanism was heavily used, file names could occaisonally
342 be printed on the terminal and log file as "(?)". This has been fixed.
343 8. Setting PATHEXPAND in site.h causes mp, dvitomp and dmp to understand "//"
344 in path variables as "search multiple levels of subdirectories". This is
345 for compatibility with recent versions of the Web2c TeX distribution.
346 9. A typo in mpware/makempx and mpware/troffmpx has been fixed. Previous
347 versions of these scripts would not run on some systems.
348 10. Data files *.d have been added to the doc directory. These are used by
349 doc/mpgraph.mp which generates figures for "Drawing Graphs with MetaPost".
350 11. Typos in mpintro.tex and mp.web's TeX material have been fixed.
351 12. Files examples.mp, mpintro.tex and mpintro.bib have moved from mplib to
353 13. The author's email address now appears in the README file.
356 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
357 Macros added to the mplib directory between Versions 0.50 and 0.62:
358 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
359 rboxes.mp is a slightly more general version of boxes.mp
360 TEX.mp provides a way of running tex dynamically instead of as a pre-processor
361 graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp are documented in doc/mpgraph.ps
362 (This is the same as ftp://netlib.att.com/netlib/att/cs/cstr/164.ps.Z)
363 marith.mp, string.mp, texnum.mp, and troffnum.mp are low-level packages
364 used by graph.mp, format.mp, and sarith.mp.
367 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
368 Other minor bug fixes subsequent to Version 0.60
369 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
370 1. plain.mp has been fixed so that the x**y works properly when x<0 and y is
372 2. Programs mptotex.c and mptotr.c which extract btex..etex material have been
373 fixed so they work properly with input files that do not end with a newline
375 3. Program dmp.c which handles troff output from btex..etex blocks has been
376 modified to avoid outputting any non-ASCII characters that the C function
378 4. Program dmp.c no longer gets troff graphics specials confused with text.
379 This seldom matters because btex..etex blocks are unlikely to contain
381 5. Pictures containing clipped subpictures could come out with some colors
382 in the subpicture wrong.
383 6. Colors in PostSript output were not being restricted to the standard 0..1
385 7. Transforming a path or a pen should no longer generate extraneous overflow
386 errors in certain unusual situations.
387 8. Drawing with a degenerate 2-vertex polygonal pen such as penrazor should
388 no longer cause an infinite loop in certain unusual situations.
389 9. There were some bugs in the mfplain macros. (These macros are designed
390 to similate plain METAFONT.) The drawing and filling macros now apply
391 currenttransform to the path but not the pen rather than vice versa.
392 The predefined modes now set o_correction to 1.0.
393 10. For security reasons, mp can no longer read or write files whose names
397 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
398 Changes to the MetaPost language between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
399 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
400 1. New operator `readfrom <filename>' and new command
401 `write <string expression> to <filename>' do file I/O. Plain defines
402 a special string EOF that readfrom returns to indicate end-of-file
403 and write..to understands as well.
404 2. New iteration type `for p within <picture expression>: <loop text> endfor'
405 iterates through the interior components of the picture. An `interior
406 component' is a single pen stroke, filled outline, or piece of typeset
407 text. A part of the picture enclosed in a clipping or setbounds path
408 also counts as an interior component. If the whole picture is enclosed
409 in such a path, the for..within iteration looks inside. Note that a
410 picture generated by btex..etex is enclosed in a setbounds path.
411 3. The length operator now applies to pictures. It returns the number of
413 4. New boolean operators stroked, filled, textual, clipped, bounded test
414 the first component of a picture. A picture enclosed in a clipping or
415 setbounds path counts as a single component.
416 5. Part extraction operators now work for pictures. Standard operators
417 redpart, greenpart, bluepart apply to the color of the first component
418 and xpart, ypart, xxpart, xypart, yxpart, yypart extract parts of the
419 tranformation that has been applied to a text component. If `textual p'
420 is false, the transform components are all zero; if `clipped p' or
421 `bounded p' is true, the color parts are all zero. Additional operators
422 fontpart, textpart, pathpart, penpart, dashpart extract other information
423 from the first component of a picture. They all return null values when
424 the first component has the wrong type: fontpart and textpart return
425 null strings; pathpart returns the path (0,0); penpart returns nullpen;
426 and dashpart returns nullpicture.
427 6. The construction `dashed nullpicture' is now a no-op. It used to be
429 7. The clip and setbounds statements used to ignore operations on empty
430 pictures. Now they do not.
431 8. Structuring comments in the PostScript output are now based on EPSF-3.0
432 as described in the 2nd Edition of the PostScript Reference Manual.
433 When prologues is 0, some structuring comments are included but the
434 output is not flagged a `conforming document'. Previous versions of
435 MetaPost behaved similarly but used slightly different structuring
437 9. When warningcheck is 0, numeric tokens and results from the hex and
438 oct operators can be as large as 32767.99998. The old limit of about
439 4096 applies only when warningcheck is positive.
440 10. Various optimizations should make the output a little more compact.
441 11. For PostScript engines that obey the scan-conversion rules documented
442 in the 2nd edition PostScript Language Reference Manual, hrules and
443 vrules in btex..etex blocks should now come out to exactly the right
444 number of pixels. The change affects all pen strokes drawn in MetaPost
445 It is implemented via PostScripts dtransform and idtransform operators.
446 12. A bug involving setbounds and MetaPost's corner operators has been fixed.
447 13. Degenerate elliptical pens no longer cause PostScript to divide by zero.
448 14. Fixed a very obscure bug involving readstring and end-of-file.
449 15. String compaction statistics are now printed correctly when the job
450 terminates with tracingstats positive.
454 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
455 Changes to the source files between Version 0.50 and Version 0.60
456 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
458 CHANGES to ./README.MP
459 The installation instructions should now be clearer. They also explain
460 how to cope with verious versions of WEB2C.
463 I removed unused entries and clarified instructions in commentary material.
464 Confusing comments about possibly merging it with the WEB2C version of site.h
465 were removed--I think such merging is a bad idea.
467 CHANGES TO ./Makefile, mp/Makefile, mpware/Makefile:
468 Improved default settings, simplified the `install' recipe,
469 fixed a few missing depencies, portability problems, etc.
472 mp/mp.defines, mpware/mpware.defines, mpware/dvitompext.c
473 TO mp/mp.def, mpware/mpware.def, mpware/dvimpext.c
474 (The names also changed in the Makefiles and convert scripts)
476 CHANGES TO mp/mp.web, mp/mp.ch, mp/mp.def, mp/mpext.c:
477 Lots of new features were added as noted above. The only new system-
478 dependencies are for `readfrom' and `write...to'.
479 The change file now increases max_read_files; it doesn't bother with
480 max_write_files, but perhaps it should. There is a new change entitled
481 "Path selector for..readfrom file". From the web2C sources I borrowed
482 a change "`logname' is declared in <unistd.h> in some systems". I also
483 added a PASCAL-like eof() routine to mpext, removed a change entitled
484 "avoid using eof() in read_psname_table" and added a new change
485 "[48.1199] `eof'...[in read_mem_file]".
487 Reorganization of math routines in the mp directory:
488 I moved the floating-point math routines from mpext.c to mpath.c. A
489 C-language version of the standard math routines was moved from mpmath.c
490 to a new file pmath.c for use in mathtest only. This required chages to
491 mathtest.c and time.c (also used only for mathtest). The point of all
492 this is that there is now just one copy of the floating-point math routines
493 and it is used for mathtest and (optionally) for mp itself.
495 Routines in doc and mp/trapdir:
496 The output was updated to Version 0.60. Another test file mptrap.mp
497 tests new features. There have also been minor updates to the manual,
498 although the new features for Version 0.60 are not included yet.
500 CHANGES to macros in mplib:
501 A minor change to boxes.mp should make it more robust. Changed default
502 setting of tracinglostchars in mfplain.mp and plain.mp. Added a string
503 constant EOF to plain.mp for use with readfrom and write..to.
504 Changed mproof.tex to make it more portable as suggested by Knuth.
506 CHANGES to mpware/dvitomp.web, mpware/dvitomp.ch:
507 The web file was changed to output rules as horizontal or vertical
508 penstrokes with butt endcaps. This also affected dvitomp.ch. Also in
509 dvitomp.ch, put terminal output on stdout instead of stderr and require
510 the output file to be given on the command line.
512 CHANGES to mpware/makempx, mpware/troffmpx:
513 Added comments explaining what path names need fixing. Portability improvements
514 and dvitomp's output change affect makempx only.
516 CHANGES to mpware/mptotex.c mpware/mptotr.c mpware/testex.err mpware/testex.mp:
517 Ignore an initial newline in the TeX (or troff) material to avoid generating
518 a blank line in the output file. The test file now covers this case.
520 CHANGE to mpware/newer.c
521 Minor changes to make it compile in strict ANSI/POSIX environments.