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Dan Luecking has reported the following problem on c.t.t.: When mptopdf is used on a .mp file it preprocesses the file and the result (on my system it seems always to be named mptrace.tmp) is run through mpost. This mptrace.tmp has new-lines after every semicolon (;). This causes an error when the semicolon is part of a literal string, because mpost syntax requires such strings to be entirely on one line. I mentioned also texexec, because mptopdf seems to call texexec for some purposes. I know too little perl to even know what to look for, much less propose a patch. This behavior has been confirmed under WinXP (fptex = TeXLive8) and Mac OS X (tetex). This particular problem can affect the latest mfpic (0.7, which I maintain) if a user processes mfpic's .mp output file with mptopdf. Users can work around the bug by modifying their copy of mfpic.tex, changing the line GBmsg "Bad mfpic installation; mfpic and grafbase % to something like GBmsg "Bad mfpic installation: mfpic and grafbase % This change will be provided as patch to mfpic shortly. -- Morten Høgholm