Followup to my previous post (see below) I executed the code on the "live tex site" and, mirabile dictu, there it works. The difference I can see is a much older pdfetex (Version 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)) on the live site, whereas I have a newer one (Version 3.141592-1.30.4-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5)). Could that be the problem or must I dig deeper? =============== Panic using metapost in context. This used to work. I did a file that previously (\thisisutilityversion {1998.12.20}) had good output but now has "unknown" everywhere for textext calls! \starttext \startuseMPgraphic{one} draw (0,0)--(100,0)--(100,50)--(50,50)--(50,100)--(0,100)--(0,0); label (textext("label"), (10,25)); \stopuseMPgraphic \useMPgraphic{one} \stoptext But now I see "unknown" as the text typeset instead of "label"! What happened. This is disastrous. yours sincerely, dr. H. van der Meer