Recently I reported 2 problems related to metapost usage: 1. the loss of transparent color handling 2. textext not being able to handle %'s as in textext("15\%") The source of both problems can be nailed down to the one change in supp-mps.tex: \ifx\TEXEXECcommand \undefined \def\TEXEXECcommand{texmfstart texexec} \fi If I understand correctly, this effectuates a change from the perl to the ruby scripts. Removing the texmfstart solves the problem. I compared two runs for the transparency problem in order to see if there is some clue: 1. Both mp-files turn out being the same (except for the random seed). 2. The mpgraph.1 files differ only slightly, except for a few roundoff differences: new format extra lines: (but not a problem, I would guess) %%MetaPostSpecials: 2.0 123 1000 %%HiResBoundingBox: -5.66927 -5.66927 359.9991 119.05481 %%MetaPostSpecial: 7 1 1 1 1 0.94118 1 3 I had in my .bashrc: CONTEXT_RUBYSCRIPTS=/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf-local/scripts/ context/ruby/ export CONTEXT_RUBYSCRIPTS and had CONTEXT_RUBYSCRIPTS in my path. Carefully had the executable and read-allowance bits set on all the ruby scripts. I guess it must have something to do with the ruby scripts, probably MacOSX unique, I fear. Something done differently with regard to the perl scripts perhaps? Taco already hinted at the possibility of some end-of-line problem. Alas, my knowledge of ruby is nonexistent, so I have no idea what and where to look for. I tried hard to find a solution, but I really have no firm idea what could cause these problems. Hans van der Meer