Mojca, You pretty much describe the way I've always worked in the past. I am currently working on a technique where all my graphics for section1 of chapter 3 are inside a file named sectionfigs.tex. I am using MPpage and friends to make these. The file currently contains about 14 graphics and files .1 through .14 are produced when I run the file with texexec. Next, I have a file section1figs.xml that is working as per the directions in xfigures-s.pdf from Pragma. It produces a nice listing of all of the figures for section 1 and their new labels (names). I am now in my main document section1.tex including these figures as per directions in xfigures-s.pdf. I'd be happy to send what I've done when I've finished. Let me know. On Dec 24, 2005, at 4:17 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

...

Do you have one metapost file with many figures in it? Is it possible to just compile for the figurein that file that you want? Is there a command that will compile then show the result?

(sorry for not writing to the list)

If you have an .mp file, it compiles "faster than you can switch from command line back to the editor". No really, if you work with .mp, you don't need to wait for hours as you do have to wait if you have metafun graphics inside text.

You get figures filename.1, filename.2, ... out of it, so you only need to have GhostView with "filename.5" (or your desired figure) open and it also changes instantly. If you need to have a text inside it, it's an exception since it won't work until you convert the graphic into PDF (mptopdf), which takes slightly longer, but may still be acceptable.

I alway create mp files first and then (eventually) copy the content into the document if needed since it much faster.

If you need metafun macros inside .mp files, you can load them with input mp-tool; input mp-spec; (I guess.)

Metapost files can't give you the flexibility to combine extremely fancy stuff (typesetting text on paths created by metafun or vice versa), but I guess you don't need that.

Ask on the list again if you can inctruct mptopdf to convert into PDF one figure only.

Mojca