From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/27472 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Sanjoy Mahajan Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: ConTeXt + asymptote Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:17:18 +0100 Message-ID: References: <444DCA0D.5080505@wxs.nl> Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1145978269 27247 80.91.229.2 (25 Apr 2006 15:17:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:17:49 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Tue Apr 25 17:17:46 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl ([131.211.172.88] helo=ronja.ntg.nl) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1FYPID-0005RJ-E3 for gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:34 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id E6901127B0; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:31 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 12498-01; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:24 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6ECE21277C; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:24 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 509071277C for ; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:22 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 07951-02-2 for ; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:20 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from mraos.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk (mraos.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk [131.111.48.8]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with SMTP id 8276312772 for ; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:20 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from skye.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.48.158] ident=mail) by mraos.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1FYPHy-0005Yh-Ny; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:17:18 +0100 Original-Received: from sanjoy by skye.ra.phy.cam.ac.uk with local (Exim 3.36 #1) id 1FYPHy-0001Vb-00; Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:17:18 +0100 Original-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:04:45 +0200." <444DCA0D.5080505@wxs.nl> X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-BeenThere: ntg-context@ntg.nl X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.7 Precedence: list List-Id: mailing list for ConTeXt users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Errors-To: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:27472 Archived-At: From: Hans Hagen > [asymptote eps] looks parsable Those lines are only a bit of the output. It's preceded by horrible pstricks and font code to parse (about 800 lines in that eps file). I'm not sure why asymptote decided to use pstricks. I think it's for figure inclusion, but there have to be other, less hacky ways. >> + if (texengine == "tex") >> + abort("No babel package in plain TeX."); >> texpreamble("\usepackage["+s+"]{babel}"); > btw, it should be: > if texengine == latex then texpreamble ... > else you need an abort for each macro package Yeah, I'm not proud of it. By that point in the patching, I mostly despaired of finding all the hardcoded latex spots and just added the quickest hack to get something to work ("When the going gets tough, the tough lower their standards.") Not that it worked in the end. From: Taco Hoekwater > It would not be hard to add the cmyk color space, but transparancy > can not easily be done in PostScript output (it would require > overlap removal code, and that is not present at all). That's true, and the pdfmark hack added to postscript doesn't support sending transparency information to a distiller (e.g. ps2pdf or Acrobat distiller). At least, it doesn't from what I could tell by looking in the PDFmark reference manual from Adobe: Maybe it's time to abandon postscript and generate pdf directly? About the only reason I sometimes run (non-pdf)tex is because I was too lazy to convert metapost figures to pdf and hadn't added the scons or Makefile rules to convert them automatically. > I've been browsing a bit and I now know it has more of a C++ style > of doing things, but personally I don't see that as a big advantage. I agree. Although perhaps related to the new syntax or the new implementation: it's useful to have many mathematical functions ready to use for graphing -- the asymptote authors keep adding functions from the GNU scientific library -- instead of having to divide or multiply by 256 (the metapost log and exp functions) or worry about overrunning the integer range (and use the sarith package in MP). > But more importantly, most of my illustrations depend heavily on the > equation solving capabilities of MetaPost. I got the impression > Asymptote cannot do that (but I may have missed something). Right, I like the implicit equation solving in MP and find it very intuitive and matched to how I think about figures. Asymptote has only explicit equation solving. Laurence said (on the metapost list) that his 3D package for MP doesn't have implicit solving either -- I guess because the 3D objects are not native to MP so they don't benefit from the built-in equation solver. Maybe making 3d points native to MP is part of an answer to: What is actually needed to make it easy to do 3D in MP? But I'm far from an expert in 3D drawings or MP, and maybe one of the MP experts has more useful thoughts. -Sanjoy `Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.' --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.