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MetaPost Introduction
By Urs Oswald
MetaPost


MetaPost is a variant of Donald E. Knuth's METAFONT. It was created by John D. Hobby, who writes:

The MetaPost system implements a picture-drawing language very much like Knuth's METAFONT except that it outputs PostScript commands instead of run-length-encoded bitmaps. MetaPost is a powerful language for producing figures for documents to be printed on PostScript printers. It provides easy access to all the features of PostScript and it includes facilities for integrating text and graphics.

For details and the User's Manual, see John D. Hobby's homepage: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/hobby/



Graphic files produced by MetaPost can be included in LaTeX files. By the use of LaTeX, pdfLaTeX, and LaTeX2html, LaTeX text and MetaPost graphics can be readily combined into PostScript, PDF, and HTML files.

For details, see, e.g., Keith Reckdahl's excellent manual "Using Imported Graphics in LaTeX2e" (86 p.) which can be obtained by either of the following:

ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/info/epslatex.ps (784 KB)
ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/info/epslatex.pdf (1665 KB)

or on any other CTAN address.



The ConTeXt macro package was originally written to ease the development of complex and educational documents. Over time, more and more features were added and a tight integration with MetaPost has been achieved.