Hans Hagen
Alternatively, you can consider making your mp graphics like this:
\startMPpage some code \stopMPpage
This will use the regular font system, gives access to everything context as well, and makes it possible to opentype fonts. The resulting (cropped) graphic can of course be included. One can also have more of them:
That's an improvement on what I am doing. (Though I may be getting lots of ConTeXt and OpenType fonts, by using a preamble with verbatimtex %&cont-en ... etex ) Right now my figure source (blah.mpfig, say) is what would go in between begin/endfig. The Makefile wraps it in begin/endfig, and includes a header.mp with all the definitions hopefully consistent with the main document's environment (terrible, I know), writes out blah.mp, which is run through metapost and mptopdf. The disadvantage of incorparating everything into the .tex may be the edit--compile cycle gets much longer for the figures, because you have to compile the whole document or component to see the revised figure. (My rule of thumb is that typing is about 10 times faster than handwriting, unless one has to do equations, in which case you lose a factor of 3; or if you have to make figures, in which case you lose the other factor of 3 (3^2=10), and maybe more.) -Sanjoy