1MPOST(1)                    General Commands Manual                   MPOST(1)
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NAME

6       mpost - MetaPost, a system for creating graphics
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SYNOPSIS

9       mpost [options] [commands]
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11       mpost --dvitomp dvifile[.dvi] [mpxfile[.mpx]]
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DESCRIPTION

15       MetaPost interprets the MetaPost language and produces PostScript (EPS)
16       or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) pictures.  The MetaPost  language  is
17       similar  to  Knuth's  Metafont  with  additional features for including
18       tex(1) or troff(1) commands and accessing features  of  PostScript  not
19       found in Metafont.
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21       MetaPost  is  normally used with some preloaded macros, and it will use
22       its executable name as the name of the preload file to use.   For exam‐
23       ple, when called as mpost the mpost.mp file is used, which is identical
24       to plain.mp.  When the --ini option is given, preloading does not  hap‐
25       pen.
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27       The  commands  given  on  the  command line to the MetaPost program are
28       passed to it as the first input line.  (But it is often easier to  type
29       extended  arguments  as the first input line, since UNIX shells tend to
30       gobble up or misinterpret MetaPost's favorite symbols, like semicolons,
31       unless  you  quote  them.)  The  normal  usage  is to say mpost figs to
32       process the file figs.mp.  The basename  of  figs  becomes  the  ``job‐
33       name'', and is used in forming output file names.  If no file is named,
34       the jobname becomes mpout.  The default extension, .mp, can be overrid‐
35       den by specifying an extension explicitly.
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37       When  the  --dvitomp  option is given, MetaPost acts as DVI-to-MPX con‐
38       verter only.  See dvitomp (1) for details.
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40       This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive.  The complete  documen‐
41       tation  for  this  version  of MetaPost can be found in the User Manual
42       that should have been installed along with  the  program  and  is  also
43       available from http://tug.org/metapost.  See the FILES section below.
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45       The MetaPost language is similar to Metafont, but the manual assumes no
46       knowledge of Metafont.  MetaPost does not have bitmap  output  commands
47       or Metafont's online display mechanism.
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FILES

51       plain.mp
52              The standard preload file.
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54       mfplain.mp
55              The Metafont-compatible preload file.
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57       $TEXMFMAIN/metapost/base/*.mp
58              The  standard MetaPost macros included in the original distribu‐
59              tion.
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61       $TEXMFMAIN/metapost/support/*
62              Various tables for handling included tex and troff.
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64       $TEXMFMAIN/metapost/support/trfonts.map
65              Table of corresponding font names for troff and PostScript.
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67       psfonts.map
68              Table of corresponding font names for tex and PostScript.
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70       $TEXMFMAIN/doc/metapost/*
71              The MetaPost manual and tutorial source, also  including  sample
72              figures
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SUGGESTED READING

75       Donald  E.  Knuth, The Metafontbook (Volume C of Computers and Typeset‐
76       ting), Addison-Wesley, 1986, ISBN 0-201-13445-4.
77       TUGboat (the journal of the TeX Users Group).
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SEE ALSO

80       dvitomp(1), epstopdf(1), mf(1), mptopdf(1), tex(1),
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82       MetaPost source code ⟨http://foundry.supelec.fr/gf/project/metapost/⟩.
83       MetaPost home page ⟨http://tug.org/metapost/⟩.
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AUTHORS

86       MetaPost was designed by John D. Hobby, incorporating  algorithms  from
87       Metafont  by  Donald  E. Knuth.  It was originally implemented on Unix,
88       incorporating system-dependent routines from web2c, while  not  relying
89       on it except for the actual Web-to-C translator.
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91       Ulrik  Vieth  adapted  MetaPost  to take advantage of the advanced path
92       searching features in more recent versions of web2c and worked  towards
93       fully integrating MetaPost into the canonical Unix TeX distribution.
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95       The current, CWEB based version of MetaPost is maintained by Taco Hoek‐
96       water.
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98       The manual and tutorial are maintained by Stephan Hennig and Troy  Hen‐
99       derson.
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BUGS

102       Email bug reports to metapost@tug.org.
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106MetaPost 1.504                   5 April 2011                         MPOST(1)
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