MetaPost mailing list

William Adams | 8 May 2012 17:47

Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

I'm looking at going back to work on a typeface project and want to (once again) look into re-casting the
fonts as metafonts.

Is there a nice, elegant, interactive previewing tool optimized for editing a metafont?

I managed to find the MetaPostEngines.tar.bz2 which were posted to the OS X TeX mailing list a while back
(but it puts lots of figure-text information on the .pdf) --- I'm vaguely remembering some
Windows-specific tools though? Could someone re-fresh my uncertain organic memory or provide me w/ some
search terms which will work?

Thanks!

William

--

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

--
http://tug.org/metapost/

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Nicola | 9 May 2012 23:59

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Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

In article <AEF9E733-C10C-4000-89E7-FCDFB97AB3AE <at> frycomm.com>,
 William Adams <will.adams <at> frycomm.com> wrote:

> I'm looking at going back to work on a typeface project and want to (once 
> again) look into re-casting the fonts as metafonts.
> 
> Is there a nice, elegant, interactive previewing tool optimized for editing a 
> metafont?

Not that I know of. With TeXShop, you can typeset a .mf file with the 
nv-metapost engine and get a PDF preview of your font, one glyph per page. But 
TeXShop has no other specific MetaFont-editing features (e.g., syntax coloring). 
Besides, TeXShop is OS X only.

> I managed to find the MetaPostEngines.tar.bz2 which were posted to the OS X 
> TeX mailing list a while back (but it puts lots of figure-text information on 
> the .pdf)

I'm the author of those engines. Since the time I have posted to the mailing 
list, they have been improved quite a bit and the latest release is available at

http://users.dimi.uniud.it/~nicola.vitacolonna/home/content/metapost-engines-texs
hop

In particular, now you have better control over the output via special comments 
in your source file (see the documentation).

The engines are meant to be used with TeXShop, but since they are just Perl 
scripts, they can be also run from the command line or integrated into some 
other workflow.

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William Adams | 25 Mar 2013 17:33

Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On May 8, 2012, at 11:47 AM, I wrote:

> I'm vaguely remembering some Windows-specific tools though? Could someone re-fresh my uncertain
organic memory or provide me w/ some search terms which will work?

Metagraf:

http://w3.mecanica.upm.es/metapost/metagraf.php

I'd really like to see a program which was a true front-end, and interactive where one could:

- draw something in the display window and have it instantiated as METAPOST code in a text window
- edit the text window and have the display window up-date

ideally it would have a nice drawing interface which would honour Bézier curve drawing as implemented in FreeHand.

William

--

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

--
http://tug.org/metapost/

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Dave Crossland | 25 Mar 2013 17:42

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Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On 25 March 2013 12:33, William Adams <will.adams <at> frycomm.com> wrote:
> I'd really like to see a program which was a true front-end, and interactive where one could:
>
> - draw something in the display window and have it instantiated as METAPOST code in a text window
> - edit the text window and have the display window up-date
>
> ideally it would have a nice drawing interface which would honour Bézier curve drawing as implemented in FreeHand.

http://www.metaflop.com approaches this, and is free software on github.

Who is interested in writing such software? I may be able to fund
metaflop or a similar HTML5 effort.

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http://tug.org/metapost/

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William Adams | 27 Mar 2013 13:00

Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On Mar 25, 2013, at 12:42 PM, Dave Crossland wrote:

> http://www.metaflop.com approaches this, and is free software on github.

I couldn't figure out how to draw in that --- I just got a window up where I could change options
interactively, which was kind of neat.

William

(who needs a replacement for Macromedia FreeHand, and if he doesn't find one, is going to take up
woodworking w/ hand tools)

--

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

--
http://tug.org/metapost/

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Dave Crossland | 27 Mar 2013 13:09

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Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On 27 March 2013 08:00, William Adams <will.adams <at> frycomm.com> wrote:
> I couldn't figure out how to draw in that --- I just got a window up where I could change options
interactively, which was kind of neat.

You'll need to set up your own instance and design your MF files by
writing them, the normal way.

Drawing the points seems possible to implement with paperjs.org

> (who needs a replacement for Macromedia FreeHand, and if he doesn't find one, is going to take up
woodworking w/ hand tools)

Inkscape?
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William Adams | 27 Mar 2013 15:09

Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On Mar 27, 2013, at 8:09 AM, Dave Crossland wrote:

> Drawing the points seems possible to implement with paperjs.org

Thanks, I'll look at that.

>> (who needs a replacement for Macromedia FreeHand, and if he doesn't find one, is going to take up
woodworking w/ hand tools)
> 
> Inkscape?

Have to give up too much, and the Inkscape developers haven't been interested in learning from FreeHand. At
a minimum I need:

 - move just placed node by holding down <command>
 - <shift> constrains angles of off-curve points
 - <alt> frees one off-curve point from another
 - tapping <alt> while dragging toggles on a preview of the dragged object
 - joining objects and closing paths works intelligently

I'd also like PostScript fills and strokes. I really miss Altsys Virtuoso running on NeXTstep.

William

--

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

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Dave Crossland | 27 Mar 2013 16:32

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Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On 27 March 2013 10:09, William Adams <will.adams <at> frycomm.com> wrote:
> Have to give up too much, and the Inkscape developers haven't been interested in learning from FreeHand.
At a minimum I need:

Did you file these as feature requests? :)

> I'd also like PostScript fills and strokes.

What are these?

> I really miss Altsys Virtuoso

Why not use an emulator?
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http://tug.org/metapost/

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William Adams | 29 Mar 2013 16:34

Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On Mar 27, 2013, at 11:32 AM, Dave Crossland wrote:

> On 27 March 2013 10:09, William Adams <will.adams <at> frycomm.com> wrote:
>> Have to give up too much, and the Inkscape developers haven't been interested in learning from FreeHand.
At a minimum I need:
> 
> Did you file these as feature requests? :)

Yes, I've been doing this since before InkScape v0.42 or so.

>> I'd also like PostScript fills and strokes.
> 
> What are these?

Select an object and specify a bit of PostScript code to be used to fill or stroke it.

>> I really miss Altsys Virtuoso
> 
> Why not use an emulator?

'cause it's slower, and it requires that I go all the way back to FreeHand v4 file format / features, plus a
couple of bugs. I've been seriously considering it though, but I'd rather have a new program.

I suppose I'll have to buy into supporting Quasado's StageStack:

http://www.stagestack.com/en_US/

but I'd really like an elegant, opensource tool which would nicely integrate w/ TeX.

Shriramana Sharma has made some posts here about making an interactive tool, but I haven't been able to

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Shriramana Sharma | 31 Mar 2013 01:55

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Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

Hi. About my intentions to work on an interactive tool it is certainly not as a full fledged front-end in the sense of it can read/write any MP code.

All I wanted was the Hobby smooth curves algorithm. And even re that, despite Taco's help by adding the requisite C API, I wasn't comfortable with the actual implementation language CWEB or the custom build tools that are required because of it.

I have since been more comfortable and had some success with extracting the algorithm from Asymptote's C++ code.

BTW Asy has preliminary work on a PyTK based front-end called xasy. You might find that useful and maybe easier to contribute code to (because it's Python).

Shriramana Sharma
Sent from my Android phone

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http://tug.org/metapost/

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William Adams | 1 Apr 2013 04:10

Re: Elegant interactive environment for Metapost / metafont?

On Mar 30, 2013, at 8:55 PM, Shriramana Sharma wrote:

> BTW Asy has preliminary work on a PyTK based front-end called xasy. You might find that useful and maybe
easier to contribute code to (because it's Python)

I believe so.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I missed your previous mention of it, as well as a few other mentions which were
made on other mailing lists --- but there seems to be very little discussion or information on it on-line
--- will definitely look into it.

Thanks!

William

--

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

--
http://tug.org/metapost/