This might be considered a little off topic but I take the liberty to draw your attention to a problem with the mpost distribution. If there is really a problem with that distribution, I think it is in our interest to remedy it. I made mpost from the mpost-1.101 distribution (sh build.sh), then updated mpost.mem and finally called make in the manual directory of this distribution. Surprisingly a faulty cmr10.tfm was flagged. The output being: 122 ~/TeX/metapost/metapost-1.101/manual: make mpost -tex=tex mpman This is MetaPost, version 1.101 (kpathsea version 3.5.7) (./mpman.mp (/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/metapost/base/boxes.mp) ! Font cmr10 not usable: TFM file is bad. _s->...oup.addto._p.also(EXPR2)infont(EXPR3)scaled (EXPR4)shifted((EXPR5),(EX... <argument> ..._n0="cmr10";_s("Figures",_n0,1,0,0,) ;_s ("in",_n0,1,35.3674,0,)... beginbox_->...UFFIX2):=nullpicture;for._p_=(TEXT3) :pic_ (SUFFIX2):=if.picture... boxit->..."boxpath_","sizebox_",(SUFFIX2),(TEXT3)) ;generic_declare (pair)_n.s... l.26 ....aa(btex \place{Figures in MetaPost} etex) ; As can be seen, I am using the texlive/2008 distribution (on Macintosh MACOSX 10.5.6). Searching for cmr10.tfm delivers: 120 ~/TeX/metapost/metapost-1.101/manual: kpsewhich cmr10.tfm /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/fonts/tfm/public/cm/cmr10.tfm Which should be fine in my opinion. The question: Are there people out there who would be willing try the same and report the result? This is the first step to locate the problem: is this is local or does it occur elsewhere and on different systems too? Hans van der Meer