Hello, INTRODUCTION MetaPost, in fact Metafun, has extensions to include external figures as well as typeset text. For example: \startMPcode draw externalfigure("cow") ; \stopMPcode would be the equivalent to the ConTeXt command. \externalfigure [cow] However, for historical reasons (coming from its implementation in mkii), the MetaPost externalfigure() function behaves somewhat differently from the ConTeXt \externalfigure []. Another very important Metafun extension allows the inclusion of ConTeXt typeset text. For example: \startMPcode draw textext("\input knuth") ; \stopMPcode that can be substituted for the traditional MP \startMPcode label("Some text to be typeset", origin) ; \stopMPcode or its alternate form: \startMPcode label(btex $5\times10^4$ etex, origin) ; \stopMPcode In MetaFun, these all go through the textext mechanism. Getting back to external figures, one could also use \startMPcode draw textext("\externalfigure [cow]") ; \stopMPcode (There is also a rawtextext() variant, which is similar.) In MetaPost, all of these substitute a box having the appropriate dimension that gets filled by ConTeXt as the graphic gets shipped-out; there is no real modification of MetaPost or MPlib itself. After this long-winded introduction, now comes our question: PROBLEM Consider the following MWE: \setupexternalfigures [location=default] \starttext \startMPcode draw externalfigure("cow") xsized 2cm ; draw textext("\externalfigure [cow] [frame=on]") xsized 2cm ; fill fullcircle scaled 2mm withcolor red ; % origin \stopMPcode \stoptext One notices differences, notably that the Metafun externalfigure() function distorts the image as it maps it to a unitsquare. Notice also that I used the xsized transformation rather than scaled since the textext("\externalfigure[cow]") variant returns the "natural" dimension of the figure, not a unit-scaled box. The origin of the two images also differs (lower-left corner vs. center); both behave logically, as draw textext.urt("\externalfigure[cow]") xsized 2cm ; will be placed as expected. There are other issues, in particular all textexts are cleared at the exit of each MP code block, as they each occupy a luatex box. QUESTION We would like to change the behavior of the MetaPost externalfigure function, as lua makes their handling easier than in the original mkii implementation. The purpose of this message is to solicit comments, requests, and/or objections from users on the mailing list. Alan (and Hans)