Hello, It took me way too much time to trace the source of the problem, but now I've finally found it, although I don't know how to solve it. It's not crytical, but for some longer graphics metapost complains about too long lines. Assume the existance of the following file, say, a.tex: \startMYgraphic[1] draw fullcircle scaled 3cm; draw fullcircle scaled 3cm shifted (2cm,0); \stopMYgraphic The main file contains: \def\processMYfile[#1][#2]{% \def\startMYgraphic {\obeyMPlines % <- problem \dosingleargument\dostartMYgraphic} \long\def\dostartMYgraphic[##1]##2\stopMYgraphic {\startreusableMPgraphic{#1 ##1}##2\stopreusableMPgraphic} \readlocfile{#2}{}{} } \processMYfile[X][a.tex] \reuseMPgraphic{X 1} If I leave the \obeyMPlines there, I get spurious characters (probably because TeX adds some character codes which correspond to \r or \n). If I comment out the \obeyMPlines it works OK, but longer graphics fail. Thanks a lot, Mojca This is another, only partially related question, and still only of theoretical nature: Also, sometimes it fails because of TeX memory limit exceeded. (If gnuplot wants to draw a 100x100 grid, it needs 10.000 lines of code times three - one for color, one for shape, one for actually drawing/filling it, that makes it some 31.000 lines of code, and TeX cannot handle that. Will there be any possibility for a solution to it any time in the future except fixing gnuplot itself? It's not that important, but I would just like to know if that issue is solvable at all from within TeX or not.) Otherwise, the speed of gnuplot doesn't cause any problems any more. I don't know what has changed, but I bet that ConTeXt now works at least five times faster with graphics than it worked two years ago for plain text only ;)