- ntg-context - NTG Mailing Lists

Clipping bug in MetaPost with MkIV
by Wolfgang Schuster 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

Hi, I make a hole in a MetaPost graphic and add a graphic as background but in MkIV I get no hole but the lines I try to remove are still visible. All files with the two results from MkII (what I want) and MkIV are in the attachment. \starttext \startMPcode picture temp ; path mask ; draw (0,1cm)--(2cm,1cm) ; draw (1cm,0)--(1cm,2cm) ; temp := currentpicture ; currentpicture := nullpicture ; mask := unitsquare scaled 2cm -- reverse fullsquare scaled 1cm shifted (1cm,1cm) -- cycle ; clip temp to mask ; currentpicture := temp ; draw fullsquare scaled 5mm shifted (1cm,1cm) ; temp := currentpicture ; currentpicture := nullpicture ; externalfigure "holz280.jpg" scaled 2cm ; addto currentpicture also temp ; \stopMPcode \stoptext Wolfgang

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A little OT, but really worth reading
by Marcin Borkowski 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

This appeared today on the Polish TeX mailing list. A *beautiful* application of letter- and bookshapes in design. And it's Dutch! Have a nice time reading! http://pythonide.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-make-money-with-free-software.… Greets -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl) Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy about telescopes. (E. Dijkstra)

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/ModDate (mkiv)
by Peter Rolf 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

Hi, there is a small bug in the /Info dictionary when using mkiv. The 'ModDate' is written as 'Context - YYYY.MM.DD HH:mm', which results in a blank entry in the 'Document Properties' of the viewer. Anyhow, to avoid preflight problems it would be wise to set /ModDate to the same value and form (p160, PDF Reference 1.7) as /CreationDate (like in mkii). Otherwise you must have trust in the comparison routines of the preflight software (which is no good choice). Just think about PDF/X-4, where all XMP entries (http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/) are compared with the corresponding /Info entries. Best wishes, Peter

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Context using LuaTeX - distribution packaging question
by Tobias Burnus 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

Hello, for openSUSE there are now beta TeX Live 2008 packages available (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Publishing/) [By Werner Fink, who does also the normal openSUSE packages.] The question is how the ConTeXt with LuaTeX should be best handled. By default, there is no luatex-cache and no (luatex) format. Of cause a user can do: export TEXMFCNF=/usr/share/texmf/web2c # export TEXMFCACHE=somewhere luatools --generate --verbose luatools --ini --compile cont-en but in principle I would expect that the distribution does this already, which saves the TEXMFCACHE per user and makes "texexec --lua" working without requiring to run first all the other commands. Questions: a) Is the TEXMFCNF environment variable necessary or can this also be read by a config file, which is overwritten by the environment variable? Which scripts/executables make use of that environemt variable? b) Is is possible -- as with kpsewhich -- to have a global cache for the format + global directories - and local directories which have then a higher precedence? I mean like: A global directory cache incl. the format files plus if the user creates a $HOME/texmf tree a user $TEXMFCACHE which contains the hashes of the user directory but such that luatex still finds the formats in the global directory? Tobias

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Re: [NTG-context] Fwd: Thank you for the Chinese support, but still one question.
by Hans Hagen 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

> Hi, Hans, Thank you for the great works. But there is still a problem when > I test a more complicated file which is attached below. In this file, > both \bf and \bi give the same font lmroman10-bold. > > I guess the reason is that I use the same Chinese font > AdobeHeitiStd-Regular for both SerifBold and SerifBoldItalic. But this > cannot be avoided since Chinese fonts have much fewer typefaces than > English fonts. > > Would you give some suggestions to solve this problem? Thanks a lot. > > Longmin Wang i uploaded a beta for some reason the fallbacks were not part of the hash that i use to keep track of uniqueness of definitions it seems to work ok now in the beta this might also solve some of Thomas's problems there will probably be a new current later today Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

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Colored labels with MetaPost in MkII
by Wolfgang Schuster 29 Oct '08

29 Oct '08

Hi all, what is the best method to format MetaPost labels in MkII with \doattributes. \setupcolors[state=start] \def\labelstyle{bold} \def\labelcolor{red} \starttext \startMPcode label(textext("\doattributes{label}{style}{color}{Label}"),origin) ; \stopMPcode \stoptext Wolfgang

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XML
by johannes_graumann＠web.de 29 Oct '08

29 Oct '08

Hello, The family is gone for the week, so I have time to play ... What I'm doing is the following(using the attached files): context --ctx=t-openoffice BoldOnlyContent.xml Which works nicely. I'd like to make this work like so: context --ctx=t-openoffice VersuchBoldOnly.odt but whether I change the respective line in t-openoffice.tex to \xmlprocess{main}{zip://*/content.xml}{} or \xmlprocess{main}{*/content.xml}{} - no luck ... how to do this? Hans let me know how to parse xml styles on the fly, but I fail to generalize this further. When uncommenting the line \xmlval{fo:font-style}{\xmlatt{#1}{font-style}}{} in t-openoffice.tex this doesn't work as expected: context --ctx=t-openoffice BoldAndItalicContent.xml Any hints on how to fix this? I have asked related questions in the past, but have now a bit of time to investigate further ... Thanks, Joh

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Re: [NTG-context] Persian interface
by Hans Hagen 28 Oct '08

28 Oct '08

Mehdi Omidali wrote: > Attached please find a zipped file containing a sample file and > mult-def.lua with persian entries added. Other files have been created > by your method of mtxrun. I couldn't activate persian interface to > compile the sample file. i uploaded a beta (you make a persian format with "context --make pe") the attached file runs ok Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

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\startvariables failed after the current update
by Zhichu Chen 28 Oct '08

28 Oct '08

Hi there, I haven't updated my ConTeXt distribution for a very long time (for the internet connection problem here) and somehow my network worked, so I use ctxtools --update to make an update. During the updating, I got some error message like "I can't find mult-def.tex" and some other files more. Weird, because I do have those files and kpsewhich can locate them. I just input the needed files WITH the path and seemed OK. To make sure, I made another ctxtools --update and this time no error messages. Anyway, I compiled a used-to-be-working file and failed because some "Undefined control sequence" and I found the "undefined" macros are the \c!xxx and \v!yyy macros which I defined them in \startvariables all yyy: yyy \stopvariables \startconstants all xxx: xxx \stopconstants any explanations? -- Best Regards Chen ---------------------------------------------------------------- Zhi-chu Chen | Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility No. 2019 | Jialuo Rd. | Jiading | Shanghai | P.R. China tel: 086 21 5955 3405 | zhichu.chen.googlepages.com | www.sinap.ac.cn ----------------------------------------------------------------

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tikz and metapost
by Alan BRASLAU 28 Oct '08

28 Oct '08

Following some exchange off-list (trying to figure out how tikz under context got broken), the subject of understanding pgf/tikz with respect to metapost came up. I am posting a follow-up here as it may be of interest to others on the mailing list, those who know metapost very well as well as those, like myself, who are still learning how to use different graphics tools. On Sunday 26 October 2008 11:46:22 Mojca Miklavec wrote: > > I am just starting to learn about metapost, and I can't judge yet > > what pgf/tikz has as advantages and disadvantages. > > Advantages of TikZ: > 1.) many many many many "libraries" that are ready-to-use. Just take a > glimpse through the manual and it will be evident to you in the first > glimpse. If you want to draw a graph, you can do it with a few > commands. (one command draws you axis, one for function, ...) > You can achieve the same with metapost, but you need to do everything > from scratch. However, it's really easy to write your own libraries. > 2.) some special effects like smooth shading works in metapost only > conditionally (does not work with XeTeX at the moment), and you have a > wider range with TikZ > > Advantages of metapost: > 1.) rich mathematical machinery (you can write a set of equations and > metapost will calculate your coordinates) > 2.) easy to write your own macros I thought that a major interest of pgf/tikz was the production of portable graphics (using many different motors). > I use metapost when I need to program something, and TikZ when I need > to do something fancy very quickly. Another option is export to TikZ > in Geogebra. > > As an experiment, I did try comparing making a graph using > > pgfplot and metagraph, and I did *not* like the result of the second. > > metagraph is old as earth. graph.mp,v 1.2 2004/09/19 Current estimates place the age of the earth at around 4.6 billion years... > If I draw graphs is meapost, I do that > manually. Or I use gnuplot module to draw graphs for me, but graph > drawing is much easier & more flexible with TikZ if you have > datapoints ready. I myself find gnuplot to be fatally flawed and have never liked using it. (I still sometimes produce graphics using an old program written in K&R C that generates HPGL for pen plotters, with a filter that then creates postscript. Now THAT is almost stone age! But this program can also handle an arbitrary number of points VERY efficiently, only limited by the size of your storage device.) > If you need some complex curve, TikZ is improving in > that area, but in metapost it's out-of-the-box to draw it. Why did Till Tantau write pgf/tikz? Clearly he knew metapost, so another route could have been to develop a standard library of metapost macros. I'm asking these questions here as there seems to be a preference (or prejudice) towards metapost amongst the context community. Indeed, it appears pretty powerful. But as Mojca wrote about glimpsing at the pgf/tikz manual, it too is very rich and I have yet to learn about all of the new features that were introduced in pgf-2.0. Thus, I am trying to figure out where to invest my learning efforts. Do any other metapost and/or pgf-tikz experts have something to contribute to this query? -- Alan Braslau

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