reusing metapost graphics

reusing metapost graphics

[Matthew Huggett]

Hi:

I'm designing a year's worth of English lessons for some Japanese kids, 
and I'm using Metapost and ConTeXt to generate flashcards for vocabulary 
training.  I have a few questions:
(1) I want to keep my Metapost figures defined in a ConTeXt environment 
file so that I can recall them as I need in future lessons.  Is there 
anything wrong with this approach?
(2) How do I make a Metapost figure defined in a ConTeXt file reusable? 
 Do I need to wrap the definition of the figure in a macro so that the 
figure is recreated everytime I need it?
(3) With \useMPgraphic, is there any mechanism to scale the image as 
with \useexternalfigure?

If this is all in the documentation, I apologize.  (I would appreciate a 
pointer to the documentation though :-) )

scaling metapost graphics

[Patrick Gundlach]

Matthew Huggett <mhuggett@zam.att.ne.jp> writes:

Hello,

let's start with #3

> (3) With \useMPgraphic, is there any mechanism to scale the image as
>     with \useexternalfigure?


\placefigure [right]{none}{\scale[sx=.6,sy=.6]{\useMPgraphic{....}}}


> If this is all in the documentation, I apologize.  (I would appreciate
> a pointer to the documentation though :-) )

it is somewhere I guess ;-)

Patrick

Re: reusing metapost graphics

[Hans Hagen]

At 03:26 PM 3/20/2003 +0900, you wrote:
>Hi:
>
>I'm designing a year's worth of English lessons for some Japanese kids, 
>and I'm using Metapost and ConTeXt to generate flashcards for vocabulary 
>training.  I have a few questions:
>(1) I want to keep my Metapost figures defined in a ConTeXt environment 
>file so that I can recall them as I need in future lessons.  Is there 
>anything wrong with this approach?

sounds ok to me

>(2) How do I make a Metapost figure defined in a ConTeXt file reusable? Do 
>I need to wrap the definition of the figure in a macro so that the figure 
>is recreated everytime I need it?

see patricks answer; in addition to that: external figures are reused by 
default

\startreusableMPgraphic{abc}

\stopreusableMPgraphic

\placefigure{]{\reuseMPgraphic{abc}}

will also be reused

>(3) With \useMPgraphic, is there any mechanism to scale the image as with 
>\useexternalfigure?

see patricks answer

Hans
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