On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 17:53, Oliver Buerschaper wrote:
Also, is there a way to directly get the glyph outlines of, say, $\bigotimes$ in MetaPost code and use it to derive some length unit from it?
Yes, but this only works for Type1 fonts, not for OpenType. The example below is a literal copy from metapost manual (created by Taco). You first search in the source for that glyph: \definemathsymbol [bigotimes] [op] [ex] ["4E] % this equals 78 in decimal notation and then you need either name or number of glyph + name of font. fontmapfile "=lm-math.map"; beginfig(1); picture q; path p; interim ahlength := 12bp; interim ahangle := 25; q := glyph 78 of "lmex10" scaled .2; % q := glyph "circlemultiplytext" of "lmex10" scaled .2; % cheat by looking at lm-mathex.enc for item within q: p := pathpart item; drawarrow p withcolor (.6,.9,.6) withpen pencircle scaled 1.5; for j=0 upto length p: pickup pencircle scaled .7; draw (point j of p -- precontrol j of p) dashed evenly withcolor blue; draw (point j of p -- postcontrol j of p) dashed evenly withcolor blue; pickup pencircle scaled 3; draw precontrol j of p withcolor red; draw postcontrol j of p withcolor red; pickup pencircle scaled 2; draw point j of p withcolor black; endfor endfor endfig; end. Mojca