Re: plain ppchtex+supp-mps missing macros

[Ricardo Sanchez Carmenes <carmenes@bioquimica.uniovi.es>]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2001, Hans Hagen wrote:

> At 07:32 PM 11/10/2001 +0100, Ricardo Sanchez Carmenes wrote:
>
> >In addition to the small supp-mps.tex bugs reported in another mail,
> >there are some other macros missing from supp-mps.tex that are needed
> >to use supp-msp+ppchtex from plain TeX (without loading full ConTeXt).
>
> (well, it waqs never intended to work (that is: untested) so if it does
> it's nice)

Yes, indeed :)
Well, supp-msp was perhaps not intended to be used outside conTeXt, but
ppchtex was, and as ppchtex can work with pure pictex, or pictex+supp-msp,
it seemed natural to be able to use ppchtex+supp-msp outside conTeXt.

BTW, are you planing to produce pure-metapost ppchtex (without pictex) ?

> >Ppchtex.tex uses \pushMPdrawing and \popMPdrawing, defined in supp-mps.tex,
> >and making use themselves of \pushmacro and \popmacro, that are not yet
> >defined.
> >
> >The problem can be solved copying from syst-ext.tex the definitions of
> >\pushmacro and \popmacro, plus the \increment and \decrement familly of
> >macros, plus \let\redoglobal\relax and \let\dodoglobal\relax.
>
> why not load syst-ext then? I would prefer that over letting supp-mis grow
> too much; also because supp-mps might use other macros from syst-ext.

Because it then complains about other missing things ... that enforces
to call another module that complains of other missing things that ...
and so on. It was my first idea, but, outside conTeXt, I found cleaner
only to add the very few missing macros.

> >I am using a file like the attached one to use ppchtex with metapost,
> >useful with both pdftex and tex+dvips. Perhaps that you may find useful
> >to add some of the missing macros to supp-mps.tex.
>
> some of those macros have been optimized for speed recently so i would have
> to look into it in more detail
>
> Hans

Regards,
Ricardo.