Download Learning mEtapost by Doing

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Introduction
TEX is the well-known typographic programming language that allows its users to produce
high-quality typesetting especially for mathematical text. METAPOST is the graphic companion of TEX. It is a graphic programming language developed by John Hobby that allows
its user to produce high-quality graphics. It is based on Donald Knuth’s METAFONT, but
with PostScript output and facilities for including typeset text. This course is only meant
as a short, hands-on introduction to METAPOST for newcomers who want to produce rather
simple graphics. The main objective is to get students started with METAPOST on a UNIX
platform1 . A more thorough, but also much longer introduction is the Metafun manual of
Hans Hagen [Hag02]. For complete descriptions we refer to the METAPOST Manual and the
Introduction to METAPOST of its creator John Hobby [Hob92a, Hob92b].
We have followed a few didactical guidelines in writing the course. Learning is best done from
examples, learning is done from practice. The examples are often formatted in two columns,
as follows:2
beginfig(1);
draw unitsquare scaled 1cm;
endfig;
The exercises give you the opportunity to practice METAPOST, instead of only reading about
the program. Compare your answers with the ones in the section ‘Solutions to the Exercises’.
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A Simple Example
METAPOST is not a WYSIWYG drawing tool like xfig or xpaint. It is a graphic document
preparation system. First, you write a plain text containing graphic formatting commands
into a file by means of your favorite editor. Next, the METAPOST program converts this text
into a PostScript document that you can preview and print. In this section we shall describe
the basics of this process.
2.1
Running METAPOST
EXERCISE 1
Do the following steps:
1. Create a text file, say example.mp, that contains the following METAPOST statements:
beginfig(1);
draw (0,0)--(10,0)--(10,10)--(0,10)--(0,0);
endfig;
end;
Figure 1: A Simple METAPOST document.
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You can also run METAPOST on a windows platform, e.g., using MikTEXand the WinEdt shell.
On the left is printed the graphic result of the METAPOST code on the right. Here, a square is drawn.
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