On 5/06/2010 6:31 a.m., ntg-context-request@ntg.nl wrote:
>     3. Re: \MPpos, pxy, initialize_box(), oh my! (Hongwen Qiu)

hi hongwen,
thanks for taking an interest.

my initial post had a mistake:  i meant to refer to the /Metafun/ manual, not the Metapost manual.  that probably didn't help.

i guess what i should have said is, i know that pxy can give me the bounding /box/ (the rectangle with the maximum horizontal and vertical extents of its contents, be they set in horizontal or vertical mode), but can it give me the subset of that, the bounding /path/, if you will, when the contents are text which flows over several lines.  the bounding /path/ may not be rectangular, although it will be something like the union of the bounding boxes of the text's individual lines.

i think if you look at the correct reference, the difference of the effects is clear.  i think the challenge is that you don't know where the line breaks will occur until you typeset it.   --adam