Hi all, Immediately following the release of the stable MetaPost version 1.100, I can also announce the very first test version of the new development cycle. As some of you know already, in the past month I have been working on a SVG backend for MetaPost. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML. It is a W3C Recommendation, see http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ for more details. This new backend was requested by Dave Crossland, who also provided the funding to make it possible. Dave, thank you again! ================ How does it work? * There is a new internal string variable, "outputformat". Its default value is "eps", but when you assign "svg" you will get SVG output. * You may want to set the internal string variable "outputtemplate" to something like "%c%j.svg". * If you use text labels, you will definately want to set prologues:=3 With this setting, MetaPost will convert the font into curves (of course you also need a correct font map line, just as for PostScript output). With any other value of prologues you will simply get the SVG default text font in a system-dependant encoding. This is unlikely to be what you want! ================ A simple example: outputformat := "svg"; outputtemplate := "%j-%c.svg"; beginfig(1); fill fullcircle scaled 100 withcolor .4red; endfig; end. ============== Other news * The new internal string variable "outputtemplate" replaces "filenametemplate". The big difference is that "outputtemplate" is a true 'internal', so that you need a proper assignment. On the positive side, this means that you can use its (and "outputformat"s) current value with e.g. show and message. I am planning to make it possible for users to create their own internal string variables too (cf. newinternal). * The source code itself is not yet in its final form (and there is also no lua binding yet), but the output is more or less finalized unless I get requests for changes from you. * This new backend will not be the only new feature in MP 1.200, more new features are planned. One such feature will be direct access to the glyph->path conversion from the MetaPost input. ============== Files The MetaPost development project is currently hosted at Supelec, https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/metapost I have uploaded the sources as well as linux-i386 and mingw windows binaries. Have fun, Taco