%%% File: changes.tex
%%% A part of mfpic 0.7a beta 2004/04/16
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                            Changes History.

VERSION 0.0.x:

Development versions.  Never released.


VERSION 0.1:

First version released to network, 30 June 1992.


VERSION 0.1.x:

Test versions for new features, fixes, etc. None of them
were released for general distribution. Many new features added, bugs
worked out, code cleaned up.


VERSION 0.2:

Second version released to network, 7 Sept. 1992. (Still had 0.1.13.1
version number in code---oops!)


VERSIONS 0.2.x:

Resumed serious development of TeX code:  Sun 7 Nov. 1993. Much work
done on graphbase code in meantime, especially by Geoffrey Tobin.  The
primary task at this point was a radical rewrite of the TeX code,
including defining a prefix form for shading macros.


VERSION 0.2.5 of Wed 10 Nov. 1993:

Bug fix release  Primarily work by Geoffrey Tobin.


REVISION 0.2.(5.0.)9 of Mon 28 Feb. 1994:

Intended to release as version 0.3 to network. Release delayed, as
picture operator code is overhauled to cope with arbitrary overlays:  11
Mar. 1994.

Horizontal offset by unwanted glue is traced to missing comment
characters:  Fri 29 Apr. 1994.

Vertical displacement of shading reported for MF modes with
nonrectangular pixels:  Mon 23 May 1994.


REVISION 0.2.5.1 of Wed 13 July 1994:

Bug fix release  Corrected  "unxconv"  bug which remained in version
0.2.5's  graphbase.mf.


Alpha Test Versions.

VERSION 0.2.9 Alpha of Thu 11 August 1994:

A test release prior to any official version 0.3, is ready for intrepid
users. Introduces coordinate transforms, and other novelties.


UPDATE 0.2.9.1 Alpha} of Thu 8 September 1994: Fixes a bug in \sclosed
and a bug in \white, corrects some omissions and typos in the
documentation, and adds the \shadewd, \hatchwd, \lhatch and \rhatch
macros.


UPDATE 0.2.9.2 Alpha of Fri 24 February 1995: Rearranges some code in
mfpic.tex; little else to report.

In 0.2.9.3 Alpha of Thu 21 March 1995:

GT renamed \fill to \gfill, in order to avoid conflict with the LaTeX
\fill macro.


UPDATE 0.2.9.4 Alpha of Thu 13 April 1995:

Contributes a test for an existing definition of each macro in
mfpic.tex,

Renaming of \label to \tlabel, and \caption to \tcaption, in order to
avoid conflict with the LaTeX macros with those names.

\white was renamed to \gclear, because \white is a likely name for a
color macro.

Also, a new macro for defining Metafont functions was introduced,
because user-defined functions provide more power, and function plotting
macros were added that accept Metafont function names instead of
Metafont expressions.

Renaming of graphbase.mf and graphdoc.tex to grafbase.mf and grafdoc.tex
to emphasise incompatible upgrade of mfpic Metafont macros, and to
provide $8+3$ filenames for ms-dos users.

Added \hbox{} to start of \mfpic, for some now forgotten reason to do
with formatting, I suppose.

VERSION 0.2.9.5 Alfa of Wed 19 July 1995:

Replaces TeX dimensions by font dimensions for economy.

Renames  \mfcmd  to  \mfsrc  for clarity.

Renames  \wedge  to  \sector  to avoid conflict with the character name
defined in plain TeX and LaTeX.

Introduces  \mftitle,  \tmtitle  and  \plr.

Abolishes  \plrpoint,  \plrlines,  \plrcurve  and  \plrcyclic  as
redundant specializations. The meaning of  \turtle  is changed to a
Cartesian form, for flexibility.

Changed  objects.tex  to use  \tmtitle,  \plr,  \mfsrc,  \gfill,
\gclear,  \tlabel,  and  \tcaption.

Rendering macros redesigned, and  \setrender  introduced. Coordinate
transforms in  grafbase.mf  made slightly more robust. Begin an attempt
to make  grafbase.mf  compatible with John Hobby's MetaPost drawing
program.

Added comment in  grafbase.mf  about dangers of text arguments,

Updated the documentation files  grafdoc.tex,  Acknowl.tex,  README2,
MANIFEST  and  mfpicdoc.tex.


UPDATE 0.2.9.6 Alfa of Mon 24 July 1995:

Contributes  \thatch  which provides hatching by lines at any angle.

Modifications to  \pen,  \shadewd  and  \hatchwd,  along with changes to
grafbase.mf  to make drawing, shading and hatching more independent.

Decided that the behavior of  \point  inside a connect environment was
bizarre, hazardous, and an unnecessary complication to the mfpic macros,
so  \point  has reverted to its original, obvious and simple definition.

Renamed  \rotate  to  \rotatepath.

Also renamed the affine transform macros, so that they no longer use the
`s'  of the present tense, which could be mistaken for a plural. (The
sample files did not hitherto use the affine transform macros, so the
damage may be slight.)

Modified  grafbase.mf  to use a transform stack to implement local
Metafont coordinate systems; this may be more robust, and extensible to
other graphic localizations.


UPDATE 0.2.9.7 alfa, Fri 18 August 1995:

Changes to  pictures.tex:

Replaced version from "0.2.9.1 alpha  Thu 8 September 1994" to
"0.2.9.7 alfa  Sat 5 August 1995".

Added a comment containing an ASCII sketch of the commutative diagram
example, and indicated where each arc is drawn.

Replaced all uses of  \label  by  \tlabel,  \caption  by  \tcaption,
\fill  by  \gfill,  \wedge  by  \sector.

Added some uses of  \mftitle.

Moved one arrow in the commutative diagram, to illustrate the  b
option of the  \arrow  command.

Simplified Metafont algebraic expressions used in function plots, so
that they use fewer  *  operators.

Edited the example of  \turtle  to allow for the new semantics of
rectangular coordinates.

Captioned all eight figures, with figure numbers and descriptions.

Deleted an instance of  "\vfill\eject".

Increased the complexity of the seventh figure, to illustrate use of
hatching, closing, point, dotted curves, and so forth.

Made figures seven and eight twice as large.


Changes to lapictures.tex:

Renamed version from "0.2.9.1 alpha  Thu 8 September 1994" to
"0.2.9.7 alfa  Thu 17 August 1995".

Magnified the LaTeX pictures document to the same scale as the plain TeX
one, using the  \mag  command.

Set  \fboxsep  to zero.

Initialized arrow heads using  \headshape.

Commented out the center environment around the commutative diagram
example.

Placed  \fbox  commands around each picture.

Other changes as in  pictures.tex.


Extensive changes to  grafbase.mf:

Turned  warningcheck  off.

Used an explicit  designsize.

Debugging refined.

Rearranged some code.

Made  ClipOn  boolean (instead of numeric).

Added  maparr  macro.

Eliminated mistake of using  hround  in graph-to-pixel coordinate
transformation.

Remarked that clipping can distort paths by changing their points.

Tried to clip on character boundary.

Added Metafont vector coordinate transform, to complement affine
transform for geometric points.

Write message when drawing nominal Metafont bounding box.

Changed  beginmfpic  Metafont macro to take only the character code as
an argument.

Introduced global Metafont transform stack, for coordinate changes.

Replaced  currentpen  by  drawpen  in path stroking.

Changed  ourfill  and  ourunfill  to use an undelimited path argument.

Added  setdotpath,  ourdot.

Changed  onedot  to use  dotpath  instead of a scaled shape path.

Edited  tightbbox  and  bbox  to take a path described in pixel
coordinates as their first argument, instead of one in graph
coordinates.

Added tbbox.

Did some more saving of local variables in Metafont functions.

Deleted  lhatchf  and  rhatchf.

Added  thatchf,  thatch,  hhatch  and  xhatch.

Rewrote  lhatch  and  rhatch  to use  thatch.

Edited  dotted,  renamed it  dashed.

Added a separate  dotted  Metafont macro.

Changed  head  from a  def  to a  vardef;  edited  head  to clarify its
code.

Altered axis tic mark macros,  xmarks  and  ymarks  to ensure that the
tic marks are always at right angles to their axes, irrespective of
coordinate transforms.

Added a  grid  command.

Renamed  mkellipse  to  ellipse,  deleted old  ellipse.

Renamed  mkarc  to  arc.


UPDATE 0.2.9.8 alfa, Mon 11 September 1995:

Added to Acknowl.tex.


In  mfpic.tex:

Add comment about use of  \ignorespaces  to skip spaces in user's
document after  \mfpic  command.

Retain line separations of user's document's  mfpic  environment when
writing Metafont file.  This prevents long Metafont commands from
exceeding Metafont's input buffer.


UPDATE 0.2.9.9 alfa, Thu 5 October 1995:

In  mfpicdoc.tex:

changed  \wedge  references to  \sector,  and  \rotateabout  to
\rotatearound.

Added some logical formatting commands to  mfpicdoc.tex.

Included much more information about recent changes (from 0.2.9.1 to
0.2.9.8).


In  mfpic.tex:

Renamed  \@graph  to  \@graphfont  for  identifiability.


UPDATE 0.2.9.10 alfa, Fri 6 October 1995:

In  grafbase.mf:

Deleted spurious argument to  \xyswap.

Changed  \store  to take two arguments, and to logically bracket the
second, which is the path description.


UPDATE 0.2.9.11 alfa, Fri 24 November 1995:

In  grafbase.mf:

Fixed X-coordinate rounding bug in  thatchf.


REVISION 0.2.10.0 alfa, Wed 17 January 1996:

In  mfpic.tex  and  grafbase.mf:

Changed names of five Metafont macros:  xslanted,  yslanted,  zslanted,
boosted,  and  xyswapped  to  xslant,  yslant,  zslant,  boost,  xyswap.


In  grafbase.mf:

Replaced my dash and dot code by Frank Michielsen's, modified to use
suffix arguments instead of text for l-values.

Also, the  dotsize  argument to  dotted  is now effective.

Deleted the unused  ourdraw,  ourfill,  ourunfill  macros.

Simplified the  dotpath  and  onedot  initialization code; it was too
baroque.

Added a  pixdot  macro as a shorthand for  picdot(active_plane,onedot,p).

Replaced the  apoint (w, a)  macro by  bpoint (w, b)  which is a
shorthand for  fullcircle scaled w shifted b.

Gratuitously added Bruce Leban's overlay macros from the METAFONTbook,
page 295.

Cosmetic reformatting of source.


In Acknowl.tex:

Add Frank Michielsen's name.


REVISION 0.2.10.1 alfa, Thu 18 January 1996:

In  grafbase.mf:

Fixed wrong declaration in  dotted  of  dp  from  path  to  pair.


REVISION 0.2.10.2 alfa, Tue 23 January 1996:

Editing to restore compatibility with older  graphbase.mf  versions used
with xfig's (actually, transfig's  fig2dev's) mf  driver  (genmf.c).


In  mfpic.tex:

Edited writing of setting of Metafont variables  xscale  and  yscale  to
omit factor of  unitlen.

Changed references to  drawwd  to  penwd  in  \drawpen.


In  grafbase.mf:

Add declarations and initializations of these variables:  unitlen,
xscale,  yscale,  xneg,  xpos,  yneg,  ypos.

Renamed  drawwd  to its former name,  penwd.

Again made  penwd,  hdwdr,  hdten  into newinternal variables, and
assign them using  interim.

Definition of  ztr  now includes  unitlen  as a factor in the x and y
scaling.

mfpicenv  and  endmfpicenv  defined as empty statements.

bounds defined for setting  xneg,  xpos,  yneg,  ypos.

beginchar  now includes  unitlen.


REVISION 0.2.10.3 alfa, Tue 6 February 1996:

In  mfpicdoc.tex:

Updated documentation to cover to  \dotted,  \dotsize  and  \dotspace
on the one hand, and  \dashed,  \dashlen  and  \dashspace  on the other.


REVISION 0.2.10.4 alfa, Mon 26 February 1996:

In mfpic.tex:

Let internal  \sim@gdef  (simple global definition) stand for  \gdef.

Added  \newgdef  for new global definitions with a test for previous
definition.

Replaced use of  \obeylines  by  \mfpicobeylines,  to use  \endgraf  instead
of  \par,  because LaTeX(2e) redefines  \par  with unpleasant effects on
Metafont files when using LaTeX's center environment.  (To wit, LaTeX's
center environment would write  \@@par  to the Metafont file.

Defined  \preservelines  to call  \mfpicobeylines  then set
\newlinechar  to  control-M  (carriage return).

Use  \preservelines  in  \mfsrc,  thus bypassing (I hope) the mischief
arising from LaTeX in the center environment.

Wrapped replacement text of  \mfsrc  in a layer of braces.

Added descriptive comments for  \tlabel  and  \tcaption.

Set TeX's primitives  \leftskip  and  \rightskip  to zero dimension
inside  \tcaption,  so as to protect typesetting of diagrams' captions
from unwanted effects.


REVISION 0.2.10.5 alfa, Sat 9 March 1996:

Minor reformatting of  mfpic.tex,  including adding spaces, adding
comment characters at end of more lines, and renaming some internal
register variables.

Introduced  \polyline  as an alternative name for  \lines.

In order to avoid repetition of side-effects, changed  \tcaption  to use
\unhbox\@textbox,  instead of repeating its text argument.


REVISION 0.2.10.6 alfa, (two hours later) on Sat 9 March 1996:

Updated  mfpic.tex  and documentation files to incorporate improvements
by Dan Luecking:

a loading check that automatically saves and restores the catcode of
`@';

the name of the graph base is now stored in a macro near the top of
mfpic.tex;

\leavevmode  is now moved [GT has, for now, commented it out
completely];

\polyline  introduced as a synonym for  \lines;  a  \polygon  figure
has been introduced;

\\  specifies explicit line breaks in tlabels and tcaptions;

\onelevel  causes one level of expansion in an  \edef;

\savepic  and  \copypic  allow saving, use and copying of an entire
mfpic picture, including its tcaptions and tlabels.

Also modified \tcaption code to prevent repeated use of the text
argument, as that can cause side effects, as reported by Dennis
Petrovic.


REVISION 0.2.10.7 alfa, Sat 28 March 1996:

First release via Geoffrey Tobin's School's local anon ftp site:

    ftp.ee.latrobe.edu.au : pub/gt/mfpic

Added  skip-pix.tex  file, which tests whether TeX's  \leftskip
primitive breaks up mfpic's typesetting of diagrams.  Fortunately, it
seems not.


REVISION 0.2.10.8 alfa, Tue 26 May 1996:

Second, and bug fix, release via Geoffrey Tobin's anonymous ftp area.

Due to change in syntax of  \store  to take the path command as a second
argument (which made coding of  mfpic.tex  easier),  objects.tex  and
part of  mfpicdoc.tex  needed to be amended. Reported by Miroslav Dont
(Thu 16 May 1996).

Descriptions of LaTeX environments clarified to emphasise that mfpic's
plain TeX command names may be used in LaTeX.  This is useful to know
when designing automatic code generators.  Reported by Van Snyder (Fri
17 May 1996).

Added hyphenation to  \MFbook  in documentation macro file  header.tex.

Noticed that the method by which the line breaks in the TeX file are
copied into the Metafont file can cause command arguments to be omitted
from the Metafont file unless at least the left brace (immediately
before the arguments) occurs on the same line as the command. Corrected
objects.tex  to obey this restriction. Also noted this phenomenon in
mfpicdoc.tex.  Effect reported by Miroslav Dont (Thu 16 May 1996).

Updated  lapictures.tex  to LaTeX2e.

Added LaTeX2e logo to  header.tex.


REVISION 0.3.0 alpha, 1998:

Numbers jump a lot from here because I (Dan Luecking) have been lax in
keeping track of changes. First version with support for Metapost.
(Yes!)

Translated  grafbase.mf  to  grafbase.mp,  retaining all(?)
functionality.  Now any(?)  .mf  file created by a recent mfpic can be
run through Metapost to produce a PostScript picture.  Lots of problems
with Metapost capacity, especially with shading.  It is apparently a lot
more memory intensive to hold thousands of circular paths in memory than
hundreds of thousands of pixels.  Ultimately recoded the  grafbase.mp
shading macros to simply calculate a gray colored fill.

Added  grafbase  functions  sin,  cos,  and their inverses  invsin,
etc., that compute in radian measure. Also  tan  and  cot.

Wrote  mppicdoc.tex,  which can be TeX-ed alone or input from
mfpicdoc.tex.  Should probably combine the two documents. Made small
changes to  header.tex:  added logos for pdfTeX and pdfLaTeX. Changed
The macros  \MF  and  \MP  to use small capitals. Minor modifications to
\LaTeX  and  \LaTeXe


REVISION 0.3.8 alpha, 1999:

Color has been added. Standard colors for lines/curves  (drawcolor),
fills  (fillcolor),  hatch patterns  (hatchcolor),  and arrowheads
(headcolor)  added to  grafbase.mp.  Corresponding macros in  mppic.tex
for setting these colors. Optional arguments for color added to  \gfill,
\draw,  \arrow,  and all the hatching macros. A new macro  \polkadot
creates polkadot fill patterns.

Changed some of the commands for setting dimensions so that they
actually worked, and so they are local to mfpic environments.

Added support for LaTeX2e's  \usepackage  command and options. Added
graphics inclusion code, summoning the following packages:  epsf  for
plain TeX or LaTeX209,  graphics  for LaTeX2e and pdfLaTeX, the macro
files  supp-pdf.tex  and  supp-mis.tex  from the ConTeXt distribution
for plain \pdfTeX). Added code to detect which TeX format was in use.


REVISION 0.3.9 alpha, 2000:

Altered almost all messages written to the log file or the terminal to
announce they were from mfpic. Altered format detection code to test
against both  \UndEfInEd  _and_  \relax  (lest some previous package
convert certain commands to  \relax  using the  \csname  style test).
Minor change to definition of  \circle  to avoid error messages in LaTeX.

Changed the graphic placement code so that it tests for the existence of
the graphic first (to avoid all those error messages from  epsf,
graphics,  etc., on the first pass, or when Metapost fails to make a
graphic).

Tried to find and change code in  grafbase  where we could inadvertently
divide by zero. Added another closure prefix  \uclosed  and its
corresponding  grafbase  support, to close a path smoothly (meaning
simply matching directions at both ends), but keep the original curve
Unchanged. The current  (\sclosed  simply closes with  ..cycle  which
alters the original curve.


REVISION 0.3.10 alpha, 2000:

Put mfpic version, date and package name into macros for use in
messages. Decided the package name is "mfpic" if it is input as
mfpic.tex  or  mfpic.sty,  otherwise  mppic,  regardless of whether the
metafont  or  metapost  option is used. There are four files
m[fp]ic.[sty,tex],  which simply set the package name and input
mppic.tex  if necessary. Also put this version and date info into
strings in  grafbase.mf.

Added changes contributed by Jaromir Kuben (Thanks!): An option
centercaptions  and command  \centercaptions  to center the lines in a
\tcaption.  Also  \nocentercaptions;  these can be used at any point to
turn the feature on and off. Improvements (corrections?) to the code
that positions text labels (so that) labels that extend outside the
picture are correctly taken into account. Changes to the positioning
parameters in  \tlabel.  Both  c  and  b  now take into account the
depth of the text  b  puts the absolute bottom of the text in line with
the point.  A new parameter  B  to align the baseline of the text with
the point. Jaromir also contributed several corrections to grafbase.mp
(mostly inadvertently introduced by me, DHL).

Added option  dvipsnames  to allow color names as in the dvips header
color.pro.  Requires file  dvipsnam.mp.  Added  grafbase.mp  macros:
cmyk,  RGB,  gray  and  rgb  to convert from the indicated color space
to Metapost's internal color space (which is  rgb,  so the last is a
no-op).  In plain TeX the command  \dvipsnames  can be used in the
preamble (before  \opengraphsfile).

Added macro  \ConTeXt  to  header.tex,  a macro  \opt  for style of
LaTeX2e option names. Changed  \prog  to typeset its argument in
sans serif font. Changed  \tmtitle  in  mppic.tex  so it _doesn't_ ignore
following spaces (it ended with  \mftitle  which invokes  \ignorespaces).

Added functions  tanh,  its inverse  atanh,  and additional trig
functions  secd,  sec,  cscd,  csc,  atan,  invtan.  Made  log  a
synonym for  ln.  Added complex variables functions  Arg,  cis,  zexp
and  Log.

Changed all trig, hyperbolic,  exp,  log,  etc, to use syntax "vardef
<name> primary X"  so as to match (I hope) as close as possible the
behavior of the built-in  sind  and  cosd.

Changed  \do@ptparami  so that it does not strip too many braces. This
was done by changing the line  \redef\@ptparami  to be parameterless
(delaying the reading of the optional parameter). The old code read the
optional parameter, replaced it, then read it again. This strips two
levels of braces, making two levels of bracing necessary to hide an
enclosed bracket:
  \draw[{{\color[cmyk]{1,1,0,0}}}]...
(Such use of LaTeX color macros has not yet been added, but might be one
day.) This strategy is closer to LaTeX's optional parameter handling
technique.


REVISION 0.3.11 alpha, 2000:

Added  \plot  (usage \plot[<size>,<separation>]{<shape>}...) similar to
\dotted  except:
1) explicit shape required (shapes  Triangle,  Square,  Circle,  Plus,
   Cross,  Star,  SolidTriangle,  SolidSquare,  SolidCircle).
2) initial size and separation are  2pt  and  5pt.
3) Size is governed by  \plotsymbolsize,  and separation by
   \plotsymbolspace.  The dimension  \plotsymbolsize  corresponds
   roughly to the _average_ diameter of the shape.

Added code to  mkfcn  and  parafcn  so that the end of the curve falls
on the given endpoint (even if  bst  doesn't go evenly into  bmax-bmin).
Also ensure the loop parameter doesn't exceed infinity. Also avoid
problems if the sign of  bmax-bmin  differs from that of bst.


REVISION 0.3.12 alpha, 2000:

Save and restore catcodes of certain punctuation  (@.,:;!?{}`'=/-  and
parentheses), as well as spaces, setting punctuation to 12 while reading
mppic.tex  to ensure the right stuff gets written to the  .log  and  .mp
files.

Added macro  \datafile  to read a file of number pairs and create the
polygonal path connecting them. Works like the other figure macros
(i.e., may take any prefixes).

Added options  clip  (to clip all pictures to the specified dimensions),
truebbox  (to give the metapost output file the true bounding box rather
than the one specified in the  \mfpic  arguments), and  debug  (write
debugging info to terminal and log file). Command forms:  \clipmfpic
turns it on  \noclipmfpic  turns it off. Similarly, \usetruebbox  and
\notruebbox.  For debug we can define  \mfpicdebug  before loading
mfpic.tex  (which will turn on debugging information written prior to
option processing), and in the rest of a source file,  \mfpicdebugtrue
and  \mfpicdebugfalse  will switch it on and off.

%%% Revised after here, adding spaces before and after code and math
%%% removing blank lines, stray TeX markup, reformatting  paragraphs, etc.
Changed names of various commands to a more imperative form:
\usingmetapost  becomes  \usemetapost,  \usingmetafont  becomes
\usemetafont,  \dvipsnames  becomes  \usedvipsnames,  etc. Also changed
name of option  centercaptions  to  centeredcaptions.  Changed many
internal names, prefixing most with  "mfp@",  inserting  "@mfp@"  in the
\if...  commands.


REVISION 0.3.13 alpha, 2000:

\datafile  rewritten, now ignores leading blank lines and comments, and
won't gag on commented out EOLs. Code somewhat modularized.

Went back to technique of expanding argument of  \tcaption  twice
(caveat emptor).

New command  \plotdata  reads a data file and draws one (polygonal) path
for each non-blank sequence of lines in the data file. Exits when a pair
of blank lines is encountered (or EOF). Cycles through six different
drawing styles for successive curves. User may elect different colors
(with  \coloredlines),  different symbols  (\pointedlines),  or
different dashing patterns  (\dashedlines).  NOT a figure macro, (i.e.,
no prefixes).

New command  \using  affects what  \datafile  and  \plotdata  write to
the  .mf  output.  Default is  \using{#1 #2 #3}{#1,#2},  meaning: of two
or more space delimited numbers, write the first two separated by a
comma.

Brand new dashing and dotting code in grafbase. A complete
reorganization of the code made dashing faster. That was followed by
another reorganization and the  gendashed  (generalized dashes) command
added to  grafbase.  Now any dashing pattern can be drawn. A dashing
pattern,  ptrn,  consists of three arrays:  ptrn.start[],  ptrn.rep[],
ptrn.finish[].  The command  gendashed (ptrn) p;  draws the path  p
beginning with  ptrn.start,  repeating  ptrn.rep,  and ending with
ptrn.finish.  The arrays are numeric and specify the lengths of dashes
and gaps. A command
    dashpat (suffix name) (text dims)
takes a comma separated list dims, assigns them to the array  name.rep,
and computes reasonable  name.start  and  name.finish.

\gendashed{<pattern>}...  is a generalized dashing command;  <pattern>
is the name of a dashing pattern.
    \dashpat{<name>}{<dim1>,<dim2>,...,<dim2n>}
will create a dashing pattern with the specified name. Here  <dim1>,
etc., are dimensions specifying the length of dashes (odd positions) and
the length of gaps (even positions). A dash length of 0 is written as a
dot.  Patterns  dashtype0  through  dashtype5  are predefined and used by
\plotdata  when  \dashedlines  is selected.

Commented out several macros in  grafbase  that were never used
elsewhere, and also some that were only used once (replacing that use by
the replacement text). I haven't done any comparisons, but for the macro
dotted,  avoiding two expansions out of four (what it used to take to
draw a dot) might be a significant time saving when thousands of dots
are being drawn.

Added a couple of rounding commands to the  .mf  shading code. All dots
now pixel aligned, looks infinitely better.

Corrections to  mkfcn  and  parafcn,  they could still have overshot the
value of  bmax.

Removed all spaces (commenting out EOL's) in  mppic.tex.  It can now be
\input  in horizontal mode without generating any spaces (even without
switching to  \nullfont).  Removed  \nullfont.

Changed some more internal names.  Added  Diamond  and  SolidDiamond  to
the symbols available to  \plot  and  \plotsymbol.

At some point (perhaps this or the last revision) I added a command
\fcncurve  that draws a function (i.e., curve doesn't double back) if
the x-values are unique and listed in order. It has an optional
tension-like argument. Added an optional tension parameter to  \curve,
also.


REVISION 0.3.14 alpha, 2000:

Added  \@@tlabel  to write label text to output file between  btex  and
etex.  Added  mplabels  to make  \tlabel  use it instead of original
\@tlabel.  Commands  \usemplabels  and  \nomplabels  to turn the option
on and off. Added third part to the optional argument of  \tlabel  to
rotate the text (ignored in  \@tlabel)  so  \tlabel[Bl45]  will place
the left baseline at the point and rotate 45 degrees around that point.

New macro  \mfpdatacomment  so that  \datafile  and  \plotdata  can now
have their comment character reset. A side effect is that  `%'s  in the
data file will be recognized. Commands  \makepercentother  and
\makepercentcomment  created to allow the user to use  `%'  in  \using
arguments.

Gave  \plotdata  the ability to cycle through 8 colors or 9 symbols
(instead of only 6), but still only 6 dash patterns. (Too many makes for
confusion. Only increased colors and symbols because it was so easy.)

Added framing macro. On the first TeX run (indicated by nonexistence of
.tfm  or  fig.1),  now show a visible rectangle of appropriate size with
the figure number inside. For plain TeX users, the internal code is made
available in the user level command  \framed[<fgap>]{...}. Parameters
\framegap  and  \framethickness  control the default appearance.
(Internal code for undefined figures uses  \framegap =-\framethickness
so not to take up any extra space.)

Added some error checking: when option  mplabels  is selected without
metapost, issue error message and ignore.  Same when  \usemetapost  is
used after  \opengraphsfile.  Remove  dvipsnames  option, making all
dvips color names always available to mfpic.

Multiple changes to documentation: Added  \GS  for Ghostscript and  \sc
for small caps to  header.tex.  Folded all the new macros and their
descriptions into  mfpicdoc.tex.  Still keeping  mppicdoc.tex  for more
detail on differences between the Metafont and Metapost support.

Made some small additions to  MFobjs.tex  and  MPobjs.tex  to better
illustrate some new features.  Adjusted  pictures.tex  and
lapictures.tex  so they produce the same output and no overfull boxes.
Changed  TeXMPobjs.tex  and  LTXMPobjs.tex  so that they work better in
pdfTeX and pdfLaTeX, resetting  \pdfpageheight  and  \pdfpagewidth  (which
otherwise get magnified by  \mag=1200).

Replaced  curves.dat  with  curves1.dat  and  curves2.dat  to better
show features of  \plotdata.

Changed the default for  \using  to  \using{#1 #2 #3}{(#1,#2)},
(redundant parentheses).

Added  \fdef,  which seemed to be documented, but not defined!  Changed
the format slightly and adjusted the documentation to reflect that.

Changed  \savepic:  Now use  \newpic{\foo}  to allocate a box,
\savepic{\foo}  to store the next picture, and  \usepic{\foo}  to copy
it. Now more like LaTeX's system of save boxes.


REVISION 0.3.15 alpha, 2000:

In  grafbase,  changed  secd  and  cscd  so that  abs(temp) <
nottoosmall is tested instead of  temp  itself (which was incorrect when
temp < -nottoosmall).  Renamed  dashed  to  DASHED  to make primitive
dashed  available to power users. Added some error checking to dashing
code. Added  save  in several places in  *fcn  commands.  Changed
hatching code in  grafbase.mp  so that all (even those not used by mfpic)
respect  hatchcolor.

Redefined  parafcn  so it can call  mkfcn  like all the other function
drawing commands.

Added  \mfpverbtex  to write  verbatimtex  block to  .mp  file.

Changed a few  \newdef-s  and  \newlets  to  \def  and  \let  to keep
ConTeXt from complaining. Affected commands are  \rotate,  \mirror,
\scale  and  \grid.  Changed code for date written to output file for
same reason.

Changed  \newpic  to  \newsavepic  to more closely parallel LaTeX's
\newsavebox  command.

Allow plotting of a number in a data file against its sequence position
with  \using{...}{...\sequence...}.

Rename  \mf@gobble  to  \mfp@gobble.  Move the definition of  \newdef
earlier and use it more (didn't catch any new conflicts).

Changed  \rotatepath  from a  \@modmac  to a  \@closmac  (even though it
doesn't close anything), because that makes its behavior vis-a-vis
rendering more in line with what one might expect. Actually, closing and
rotating both simply accept a path, change it, and pass the result on.
So both should be handled the same.

Added contributed macro \pointdef:  \pointdef{A}(1,3)  makes  \A  expand
to  (1,3),  with  \Ax  and  \Ay  expanding
to  1  and  3,  respectively.

Provide a directory structure to the distribution. Rename file mppic.tex
to  mfpic.tex  and provide files  mppic.tex,  mfpic.sty,  and  mppic.sty
as wrappers to input it.  Made Metapost the default when  mppic.*  are
used.

Add some error correction to  dashpat:  force an even number of
dimensions.


REVISION 0.3.16 alpha, 2000:

In grafbase:

Change name of  glabel  (in  grafbase.mp)  to  gblabel  so as not to
conflict with  glabel  from  graph.mp  in the standard Metapost
distribution. Adjusted  mfpic.tex  accordingly.

Correct the change to  dashpat  made in 0.3.15: don't force dashing when
there are fewer than 2 dimensions in the list. Instead, this is the
signal to draw a solid curve.

Save the variables  dashes  and  dots  used in the macros  DASHED  and
dotted.

Uncomment three macros commented out in 0.3.13:  tightbbox,  tbbox  and
bbox.  Though these are not used in any other macro, but they might
nevertheless be useful to users of grafbase.

Change the  dashtype[]  arrays that mix dots and dashes so they begin
with a dot.  This will produce a dot at the ends of the curve. This just
looks better than a partial dash.

Added  unbound.tex  updating mfpic info in "TeX Unbound".

Restored  mf-revu.tex,  somewhat altering its formatting and correcting a
TeX error.

Changed  \endconnect  so it tests for its use in LaTeX as an
environment and if so issues  \aftergroup\@startfigtrue  and
\aftergroup\@imrendtrue  to bypass the LaTeX-supplied  \endgroup.
Added a similar test to  \endmfpic  to set  \@ignoretrue.


REVISION 0.4.0 beta, Aug 2000:

Released to CTAN. Removed  mppic.*,  package is named  mfpic  regardless
of whether MF or MP support is needed.


REVISION 0.4.01 beta, Nov/Dec 2000:

Sergei V. Znamenskii reported (and mostly solved) an incompatibility
with AmSTeX using  amsppt  style if  mfpic.tex  is input after the
\documentstyle[amsppt]  command.  The file  amstex.tex  loads the dummy
font, setting 22 font dimensions. Then  amsppt.sty  loads some more fonts.
It appears that if font loading intervenes,  mfpic.tex  cannot add extra
font dimension parameters to dummy to use with  \newfdim.  Solved by
changing
  \font\@dummy=dummy
to
  \font\@dummy=dummy scaled 1002
in  mfpic.tex

Also corrected code that purported to detect LaTeX when in fact AmSTeX
was in use.

Added documentation of a bug in  supp-pdf.tex  which requires
\usemetapost  (as well as  \usepackage[metapost]{mfpic})  to come before
\usepackage[french]{babel}  when running pdfLaTeX. The conflict was
reported by Pascal Chantriaux.

Changed  \tmtitle  and  \mftitle  so they read the argument as a token
list and write it to  .mf  file and  .log  file without expansion. Simple
things like  "\'"  expand to quite long expressions in LaTeX2e.

Added commands  \MFPdebugwrite  (to write its argument only in presence
of debug option),  \MFPmsg  (as a synonym for  \immediate\write16)  and
\MFPICmsg  (to write its argument preceded by "MFpic: ".

Added  \restoreCODE to shorten all the lines in  \mfpic-package  that
restore the category codes of punctuation.

Added a few new debug lines in response to previous failure to detect
\AmSTeX.

Rewrote  \mfp@now  (which generates a time-stamp for the output file) to
use only 2  \count  registers instead of three.

Added  \dimendef\mfp@scratch=255  for scratch use instead having
\dimen255  hard coded. This will make changes easier should use of
\dimen255  cause any problem.

Added  \penwd  as a synonym for  \pen  (to be more in line with
\shadewd,  etc.).

Removed redundant parentheses from default \using.

Changed internal command  \mfp@rwdata,  which is responsible for reading
and writing in the  \datafile  and  \plotdata  commands, so that it
outputs
  polyline (false)((x_1,y_1),(x_2,y_2),...,(x_n,y_n));
instead of
  (x_1,y_1)--(x_2,y_2)--...--(x_n,y_n);
The intent is to have a better interface if ever we get 3D support
started.  For example,  polyline  calls  textpairs  which processes the
list of coordinates. In a hypothetical 3D environment, we'd need to
change only  \using  to write triples, and then  textpairs  could choose
to run some command that processes triples instead of pairs.

Changed use of  \unpreservelines  in  \plotdata,  etc., to the expicit
resetting of the category of ascii 13 (which was its only purpose
anyway).

Added macros  \xaxis[<hlen>]  and  \yaxis[<hlen>]  with the obvious
meanings. Plan on adding something like  \leftaxis,  \bottomaxis,  etc.,
with changes to  \xmarks  and  \ymarks  for putting tics on them.
(Haven't figured out the best interface yet.)

Added some new error messages. Rewrote almost all error messages, adding
linebreaks. Added command  \mfp@errmsg  to format error messages and set
the  \errhelp  tokens.


REVISION 0.4.02 beta, Jan 2001:

Backward comparability was inadvertently destroyed when  \curve  was
given an optional parameter and the definition of curve in  grafbase.m?
was changed.  Any  .mf  file created by using  \curve  with an older
version of mfpic would give curve the wrong number of parameters for the
new  grafbase  files. I renamed the new curve to  tcurve  and gave  curve
a definition equivalent to its old one.


REVISION 0.4.03 beta, Feb 2001:

Corrected a typo in  vardef thegblabel:  had  zz  for a parameter, but
used  z  in the replacement text. I am surprised  \tlabel  _ever_ worked
when the  mplabels  option was selected.


REVISION 0.4.04 beta, Mar 2001:

Added  \smoothdata[<tension>]  to cause  \datafile  and  \plotdata  to
draw smooth curves with optional tension setting. And  \unsmoothdata  to
restore the default.

Changed  \pointedlines  to work as documented (causing  \plotdata  to
issue the equivalent of  \plot{<symbol>})  and added  \datapointsonly to
behave as it used to (causing  \plotdata  to issue the equivalent of
\plotnodes,  plotting only the data points).

Some documentation changes: added info that something like
\xmarks{-4 step 2 until 6}  is valid.


REVISION 0.4.05 beta, Mar 2001:

Changed  vc=vt;  to  vc:=vt;  in function  clipsto.  When used on an
array of paths, the original caused an "Inconsistent equation" error
on the second iteration. Fortunately, this does not come up in mfpic
except for very advanced users.


REVISION 0.4.10 beta, May 2001:

Renamed  \fileversion  and  \filedate  to  \mfpfileversion  and
\mfpfiledate to avoid name clashes with other packages. Most packages
only use these macros for messages while loading, but mfpic writes the
information as a header comment in the output file

Added  \mfp@ifnextchar,  a clone of LaTeX's  \@ifnextchar,  and
redefined the macros  \do@ptparam  and  \alt@ptparam  in terms of it.
Copied LaTeX's code to eat one space after a command into the macro
\eatspacedef.

Added  \mfp@delim  as an all-purpose argument delimiter. For debugging
purposes, its definition is to issue an error message saying it
shouldn't ever be triggered.

Slight rewrite of  \mfp@now  and  \mfp@today.

Renamed  \framed  and related macros by prefixing  mfp  or  mfp@.  Some
formats and packages (ConTeXt, for example) have a  \framed  macro. Now
\mfpframed  _can_ be used, and  _must_ be used if  \framed  already
exists (as in ConTeXt).  Replaced   \framegap   and  \framethickness
with  \mfpframegap  and  \mfpframethickness.  If  \framed  is already
defined, the old version is kept and the user may not get the effect
described.

Slight change to what is printed in the  .dvi  file when a mfpic detects
that Metafont or Metapost has not been run, or the figure is absent.

New  dimensions:  \tlabel@hadj,  \tlabel@vadj  and  \tlabel@sep  for
shifting  \tlabel  text. The first is a horizontal adjustment, the second
vertical, added to every label. The third shifts the label directly away
from the point of placement (unless optional argument  "[Bc]"  or
"[cc]"  is used).  A label is shifted by  \tlabel@sep  downward when the
`t'  parameter is found, upward for  `b',  rightward for  `l'  and
leftward for  `r'.  The first two dimensions can be set with a new macro
\adjustlabels{<hadj>}{<vadj>}  (name later changed to  \tlabeljustify,
and the third with  \tlabelsep{<dimen>}.  Need to do it this way because
under  mplabels  they need to write the information to the output file.

Added  \expandafter  before  \@render\fi  in several places.  This now
appears not to be needed, but the  \fi  following  \@render  caused
problems with some experimental versions of optional argument handling.

Added the following macros for drawing axes along the borders of the
picture:
 \leftaxis
 \rightaxis
 \topaxis
 \bottomaxis
 \bottomleftaxes
 \borderaxes
 \leftaxisshift
 \rightaxisshift
 \topaxisshift
 \bottomaxisshift
The first four draw the appropriate axis (no head by default), the last
four set an amount (in graph units) to shift the axis inward.

For tick marks we have:
  \lmarks
  \rmarks
  \tmarks
  \bmarks
  \lmarksposition
  \rmarksposition
  \tmarksposition
  \bmarksposition
  \xmarksposition
  \ymarksposition
The first four set the positions (and optionally size) of the tick marks
on the corresponding axis, the next six determine if the marks are
centered, or on one side of the axis. They take an argument which must
be one of  inside,  outside,  centered,  ontop,  onbottom,
onleft,  or  onright.  For side axes the default is  inside,  while
for x- and y-axes it is  centered.

For arrowheads on the side axis we have  \sideaxishead  which takes a
dimension argument and sets the length of the arrowhead. To turn heads
off again set the length to  0pt.

Added  \gridlines  to draw a regular grid of lines. It's syntax is the
same as that of  \grid.  Changed the behavior of  \grid  so that instead
of starting at the left and bottom, it draws the grid centered on the
origin of the graph coordinates.

Changed most of the \if-tests so that if an incorrect optional parameter
is used, the default behavior will be seen. For example,  \function
takes an optional argument of  [s]  or  [p]  with  s  the default.  The
code had been:
  \if ##1s true\else false\fi
and I changed it to
  \if ##1p false\else true\fi
so for the typographical error  \function[o],  the user will get the effect
of the default  s.

Added the command  \labeljustify  to change the default justification
of text labels. For example,  \labeljustify[cr]  makes the default
[cr]  instead of  [Bl].

When  truebbox  is in effect, but mfpic detects that Metapost has not
been run,  truebbox  is turned off for each picture. Before, this was
global, now it is local (so that it doesn't affect a new  \opengraphsfile
command, even though mfpic does not officially support more than one
\opengraphsfile  commands per file).

Added the command  \tlabels  (note the plural). It has one mandatory
argument which contains a concatenation of arguments for one or more
\tlabel  commands. These arguments may (but need not be) separated by
spaces or new-lines.

Replaced all occurrences of  \@labeldim,  which had been  \let  equal to
\mfp@scratch,  to the explicit control sequence  \mfp@scratch.  This was
to avoid confusion that could have been caused by changing one of them,
not realizing they should be the same.


REVISIONs 0.4.11--15 beta, July 2001:

Restored a lost backward comparability: I stored the (Metapost)
primitive meaning of  dashed  in the command  dashed_  and made  dashed
synonymous with  DASHED.  Power users will have to use dashed_  if they
wish to invoke that primitive after loading  grafbase.mp

Added  \MFPICwarn  in addition to  \MFPICmsg  and  \mfp@errmsg.  Added
"MFpic error: " to the front of all mfpic generated error messages.
Introduced  \on@line  (from LaTeX) to place the line number in warnings.

Removed many more spaces and eols from  mfpic.tex  (lest it be input
with spaces or eols active).  Added some spaces between a command and
`!'  lest the latter have category 11.

Changed name of  \restoreCODE  (and others) to  \MFPrestorecode  (etc.)
after running across a package which defined  \restorecode.  Introduced
\@xp  (from AMSLaTeX) for  \expandafter.  Removed saving of the current
font as  \@torig,  since we no longer change to \nullfont.

Added test for equality to  \relax  in  \testdef.  Removed  \newlet
(later put it back),  \sim@def  and  \sim@gdef  as they are not used (any
longer). The latter two were used once each and those were changed.

Changed handling of  \if@mfp@metafont  and  \if@mfp@metapost  to ensure
they are kept mutually exclusive. Changed handling of
\@if@mfp@beforefileopen  from a simple  \if...\else...\fi  to saving the
alternatives in a macro and then issuing the macro after the test.
Changed  \mfp@clip  to make it global if issued before  \opengraphsfile.
Redid  \mfp@truebbox  to ensure it is global, but leave an out so that
\@mfp@truebboxtrue/false  could be set locally.  Made similar
changes to  mplabels.

Removed  \unpreservelines  from  \mfsrc  since grouping restores EOLs.
Also made  \mfsrc  check that a  .mf/p  file has been opened.

Removed the definition of  \mf@bsl  since it is not used (any longer).

Delayed the definition of  \mfp@data  until  \@mfpic@graf@macs.
Introduce the hook  \mfp@additions,  to be expanded last in
\@mfpic@graf@macs.

Changed the name of macro  \mfplinestyle  to  \mfplinetype and the
\count  register  \mfp@linestyle  to  \mfp@linetype.
Changed name of  \missinggraphfileerror  to  \nooutputfileerror.
Changed name of  \adjustlabels  to  \tlabeloffset.
Changed name of  \labeljustify  to  \tlabeljustify.

Try to support multiline labels even in the case of mplabels by writing
appropriate definition of  `\\'  to the  .mp.

Changed definition of  \mfp@scratch  from  \dimension255  to a register
defined by  \newdimen.

Added ability to create a curve surrounding some text: macro
\textboundary  creates a rectangle, with optionally rounded corners,
\textoval  creates an ellipse with aspect ratio the same as the block of
text,  \textellipse  creates an ellipse with a given aspect ratio,
\textcircle  is  \textellipse  with aspect ratio of  1.  TeX measures
the text and transmits the information to Metafont.

New macro  \axislabels.  This takes a letter indicating the axis, an
optional justification parameter (as in  \tlabel)  and a comma separated
list of TeX text and numbers. The numbers indicating the position on the
given axis to place the text. Since side axes may be offset from the
edge of the graph, the utility  \mfp@addto  is used to add the boundary
coordinate (one of the parameters of  \mfpic)  to the appropriate offset,
returning the result in graph units for use in a  \tlabel  command. The
default justification depends on the axis. It is chosen so that the text
ends up outside the border axes, below the x-axis and left of the
y-axis.

Color additions: added  \tlabelcolor  and  grafbase  color variable
tlabelcolor  to control color of Metapost placed text; added
\backgroundcolor  to set the color variable  background,  the color used
by  \gclear  and by all plain Metapost  unfill  operations. Had to
rewrite the various color setting macros since, till now, all assumed
the color variable name ended with the string  "color".

Changed the macros introduced in 0.4.10 or previous that controlled the
position of the side axis. Now instead of saying
  \leftaxisshift{<num>}
one says
  \axismargin{l}{<num>}.
One can set all 4 margins at once with
  \setaxismargins{<num>}{<num>}{<num>}{<num>}.
or all margins to the same number with
  \setallaxismargins{<num>}.

A similar change was made to the setting of the axis marks position
(i.e., inside, outside or centered). Instead of
  \lmarksposition{inside}
one writes
  \setaxismarks{l}{inside}.
One can also set the position of all the border marks at once with
\setbordermarks,  or all border marks to the same position with
\setallbordermarks.

Command  \drawaxes  added: it takes a comma separated list of
letters chosen from  x,  y,  l,  b,  r  and  t,  and draws the specified
axes.  Later renamed to  \doaxes,  and commas omitted.

Added optional parameter to  \plotdata  and  \datafile  which
has the form  p  or s<num>.   "[p]"  causes a polygonal curve to be
plotted and  "[s<num>]"  causes a smooth curve to be drawn, with the
given number as the tension. The number may be omitted, and then
grafbase's  value of  curvetension  (default 1.0) will be used.  Any
other letter or none is the same as  [p].  Internally, the optional
parameter is passed to  \mfp@rwdata,  which now, of course, takes
parameters.  Along with this,  \smoothdata  was revamped to simply
change the default optional parameter, rather than set a switch.

When option  metapost  is selected, each  mfpic  environment writes the
current font to the output file (in  verbtimtex)  to have at least the
chance (under  mplabels)  to match the fonts that TeX would use in
tlabels.

Framing code: in addition to  \framed  or  \mfpframed,  we now have a
LaTeX environment:  \begin{mfpframe}...\end{mfpframe}  or, in plain TeX,
a command group  \mfpframe...\endmfpframe.  This is actually recommended
(over the first form) if the user wishes to frame an  mfpic  environment.
This ensures that category codes are not prematurely set by reading the
whole picture as an argument.

Changes to grafbase:

Moved  interim warningcheck:=0;  after  mode_setup  because  mode_setup
sets it to 1. Now that  warningcheck  is correctly set, we can change
the test of parameters in  secd,  etc., from comparing with  nottoosmall,
to comparing with  reallysmall.

Streamlined  minpair  and  maxpair.

Define transform  vtr  on its own in  setztr  rather than only the macro
vconv  being defined (in terms of  ztr).  Define ztr  in terms of  vtr
(the "right way to do things", said the linear algebra teacher).
Remove definition of  invztr  and use  inverse ztr  the few times necessary.

Remove the "complicated  zconv"  entirely.

Added plain Metapost's  image  command to  grafbase.mf.

Changed the command executed when  clipall  is true to  clipto  instead
of  clipsto.

Added  textboundary,  textoval  and  textellipse  to put paths around
text. Only the size and center point of the text is passed by mfpic, not
the actual text. These implement the mfpic commands  \textboundary,  etc.

Added parameters  pair label_adjust and  numeric label_sep.
These are used in  grafbase.mp  for shifting labels. They are also
used there and in  grafbase.mf  for positioning and sizing  textboundary,
textoval  and  textellipse.

Added test for  ClipOn  to dashing code,  plotsymbol  and  plotnodes.

arrowdraw  now checks for  hlen > 0  before drawing head.

Complete rewrite of axes code and drawing of hash marks on axes. Four
new axes added  leftaxis, etc.

Changed code for  grid  so it is fitted to the coordinates: integer
multiples of  xspace  and  yspace  are plotted. Added  gridlines.

Changed  arcppp  in  grafbase  for more robustness (I hope) and better
result on small values of  sweep.


REVISION 0.4.16 beta, July 28--30 2001:

-- Changed name of  \textboundary  to  \tlabelboundary  and then
   \tlabelrect.
-- Changed name of  \textoval  to  \tlabeloval.
-- Changed name of  \textellipse to  \tlabelellipse.
-- Added "star form" of each that defines the curve without placing the
   label.
-- Renamed  grafbase  command  textboundary  to  textrect.

Replaced the four commands  \leftaxis,  etc., with single
command
  \axis[<hlen>]{<one-axis>}
(example \axis{l}) and \borderaxes, etc., with
  \doaxes[<hlen>]{<axis-list>}
(example \doaxes{lbrt} for the 4 borders).

Recoded  \mfp@now  so that only 1 count register is used.


REVISION 0.4.17 beta, July 28--Aug 10, 2001:

Changed  grafbase.mp  commands  textrect,  etc., so the first two
parameters (dimensions of some unspecified text) became one parameter,
which could be either of type  pair  (the two dimensions),  string,  or
picture  (e.g., a  btex...etex  expression).  In the latter two cases,
Metapost measures it and uses those dimensions to make a rectangle, etc.

Gave all commands that take a  [s]  smoothness specification the
option to make it  [s<tension>]  to draw the curve more tightly.
Commands affected:  \function,  \parafcn,  \plrfcn,  \btwnfcn  and
\plrregion.  This necessitated changes in grafbase code to  mkfcn  so
that it accepts a tension parameter. Plus changes to all the macros that
call it:  parafcn,  xfcn,  function,  rfcn,  and  plrfcn.  Those that
are used by mfpic, like  function,  were altered as follows. The name was
changed to  tfunction,  it was given a tension parameter and the call to
mkfcn  passes that parameter. A new macro named  function  simply calls
tfunction  with default tension. This was to make the new  grafbase
accept old files generated by mfpic.  Those macros not used by mfpic
(rfcn  and  xfcn) simply call  mkfcn  with tension equal to 1.

Redid  doplot,  plotsymbol,  and  plotnodes  so that the plotting symbol
can be a picture as well as a path. If a path, it is scaled by the scale
parameter. A picture is not scaled, since this is essentially not
possible in Metafont and since it is expected that in Metapost it will
be a  btex...etex  expression and the size is determined by the font.
Because this is expected to be the typical case, the picture is shifted
so that its center at the chosen position (instead of the left
baseline). This is not done in Metafont since finding the center of a
picture is non-trivial. In  grafbase.mp  the first parameter is also
allowed to be a string, and is then converted to a picture with the
infont  operator. In all other cases it reverts to a default dot scaled
by the second parameter.

Changed the  \mfpic  command so both optional parameters may be omitted
(scale 1 is then assumed).  Also, the first parameter is no longer saved
in  \@param.  That was not a serious problem, but I did experience a
hard-to-debug problem from using the same temporary name in another
command. (It seems that  \@param  is not expanded until  \@xconv  and
\@yconv  are used in tlabels, and I included a redefinition of  \@param
in a command that calls  \tlabel).

Added  EOL, `*',  `"'  and  `$'  to the list of symbols whose catcodes
are saved, changed while reading  mfpic.tex,  and restored at the end.
`$'  is put in category 12 and used then in several  \if  tests for empty
arguments (previously  `!'  was used, then  `@'. (Changed again a couple
of times!)


REVISION 0.4.18 beta, Aug 10--20, 2001:

Added point size option to  \grid.

Added a macro  \plottext  similar to  \plotsymbol  except instead of a
symbol, it takes a bit of TeX text.  The macro runs entirely in TeX,
issuing a sequence of  \tlabel  commands.

Changed  grid  and  gridlines  so the lines and points are fitted to the
pixel grid. We now use  safedraw  on
hroundpair(zconv(p1))--hroundpair(zconv(point))  instead of on
zconv((p1)--(p2)).  When  grid  and  gridlines are used with the same
parameters, this seems to make the picture periodic.

Added  \plrgrid  and  \plrpatch.

Added  \piechart  and  \piewdge.

Removed  \d@adv,  \i@mul,  \i@div,  \q@mul  as it turns out they are
either no longer used or unnecessary: \i@mul  and  \i@div,  were only
used in  \q@mul  and it isn't needed as  \x= 1.2\x  works for fdims.
\d@adv  seems to have disappeared from use.


REVISION 0.4.19 beta, Aug 20--26, 2001:

Added  \mfpicnumber  to set the number of the next character or figure.

Removed explicit references to  gcode,  instead of writing
beginmfpic(incr gcode),  \mfpic  now writes
beginmfpic(\number\mfp@count).  This way TeX's understanding of the
current figure number and Metafont's understanding are guaranteed to be
the same. The opening code of  beginmfpic  sets gcode in case any existing
files make use of it. This simplifies maintenance, and such things as
\noship  and  \mfpicnumber.

Speaking of which, added code to  \noship  to set a switch so
\endmfpic  could skip placing an empty box. I hope this makes an
mfpic environment a typesetting no-op. The only worry is that an
invisible character or box might creep into the output. (It hasn't yet,
that I've noticed, but checking would require testing virtually every
macro we've defined that can be used in an mfpic.)


REVISION 0.4.20 beta, Aug 26--Sep 1, 2001:

Added  \barchart  (it was easy after  \piechart)  after seeing comments
on gnuplot list that deprecated pie charts as a means of conveying
quantitative information. The rectangles become available as
\chartbar{<n>}. Where  <n>  is the number of the bar.

Changed the code (again!) for shade in  grafbase.mf.  I was certain
there had to be a faster way. The key turned out to be not to do a
double loop. Instead, draw the bottom row of pixels in one loop, and
then copy that row in a separate loop. The original looped O(nm) times
if  n  and  m  are the dimensions of the rectangle. The new one loops,
O(n+m)  times.  A slight extra bit of efficiency in coding is obtained
by finding the smallest repeating pattern and repeating that (avoids
shifting every other row). This turned out to be two dots at a 45 degree
angle placed  \shadespace  apart. Then copy _that_ picture.

I was worried that this algorithm had to copy a much larger picture the
second loop, but it seemed to make little difference. The bottleneck
seems to be the loop overhead. There was a seven-fold speed increase in
shading a  100pt by 100pt  rectangle with a  \shadespace  of  1.2pt
(this is about the most dots MiKTeX's Metafont could handle). I came up
with another algorithm that is  O(m/n + \log n),  when  n < m.  But it
was only marginally better at the sizes Metafont could handle. Plus it
traded memory for speed. It built a shading rectangle of size at least
n/8  in  O(\log n)  iterations and then tiled with  O(m/n)  of them.
This could require up to an additional 12.5% more memory, as the last
row or column could overshoot by up to  n/8.

Changed timing so that  \mfp@count  is initialized to 1, and
incremented only in  \endmfpic  (where it is in the code skipped if
\noship  is used).

Changed  \newdef  to  \def  for  \arrow  so eplain won't generate a
complaint.


REVISION 0.4.21 beta, Sept 1--10, 2001:

Got tired of typing  "\macro"  so I changed it to  \mac.  Also got
tired of  "\vskip\myskip",  etc., so I wrote  \bcd  and  \ecd  to
bracket the headers of command descriptions. For examples, I wrote
\bex  and  \eex.  Changed the font for  \prog  to small caps and for
\opt  to sans serif. Added  \null  to the end of the definition of  \TeX
for \spacefactor reasons (saw this somewhere).

Wrote a  \myverbatim  macro for  mfpicdoc.tex  since header.tex's
verbatim wouldn't work for me. Completely rewrote  \head  and  \subhead
for better spacing and page breaks. (One of these days I will give them
numbers and perhaps translate everything to either LaTeX or eplain to
provide cross references.)

Added  SolidStar  to symbols allowed by  \plot,  etc.  Changed  grafbase
code so that  Star  produces an open five-pointed star instead of the
asterisk previously drawn. Added  Asterisk  in case anyone prefers the
old way.

Separated the part of  \mfp@rwdata  that writes the rendering code from
the part that writes the data. This is for later enhancements. The
wrapper that writes the rendering code is called  \do@datafile.  Took
out of  \mfp@rwdata  the code that wraps the point in (redundant)
parentheses. Now the parentheses _must_ be added by  \using.

Changed the name of  \mfpic-package  to  MFPicpackagE,  (part of
the paranoia that catcodes of punctuation might be changed).

Added code to several commands to test for empty optional arguments. The
reason: when an optional argument has two parts,  as in  \plotdata[s1.2]
the code splits it up as  [#1#2]  so that  s  is assigned to
#1  and  1.2  is assigned to  #2.  If  1.2  is omitted, then  #2  is
empty, but if both parts are accidentally omitted, then the closing
bracket is assigned to  #1  and TeX searches for another right
bracket. This can cause extremely unhelpful error messages from internal
commands generated much later. Now, a command like  \plotdata[]  is
treated as if there were no optional argument: default values are used.
The user can deduce from incorrect output where an error occurred.

Did the above for  \tlabel,  but only for the second part of the
optional parameter (laziness).

Added commands similar to  \rotatepath:  \shiftpath{p},  \scalepath{p,sc},
\xscalepath{x,sc},  \yscalepath{y,sc}  and  \slantpath{y,sl}.  "p"  is a
point  "sc" is a scale factor,  "x"  is an x-coordinate,  "y"  is a
y-coordinate and  "sl"  is a slant factor. These commands accept a
following path and pass back the corresponding transformed path (to
preceding prefix macros).

Released to alpha testers.


REVISION 0.4.22 beta, Sept 11--22, 2001:

Added  \reflectpath{p1,p2},  \xyswappath  and  \yslantpath{x,sl}.  Added
also  \xslantpath  as a synonym for  \slantpath.

Removed grouping in  \mftitle  that inadvertently caused  \tmtitle's
argument to be omitted from the  .log  file. Rewrote both to call a
third macro. The third macro loads the argument in a token list and
writes to the  .mf  file.  \mftitle  supplies the grouping to preserve
the token variable.  \tmtitle  also adds the grouping, plus writes to
the  .log  and to the document.

Redid  \tlabel  so that it checks for completely empty optional
parameter.

Also avoid duplicating every  \@...tlabel  command. Only ever did that
to avoid the message about rotation being ignored in the  \nomplabels
case. Somewhere along the way handling of default optional parameters
made that moot.

Now  \tlabel  begins a group, then sets  \tlabel@rot  to empty (not
zero!) if  mplabels  is not in effect, then passes
"[\tlabel@vpos\tlabel@hpos\tlabel@rot]"  as the optional parameter. The
two different commands  \@tlabel  and  \@@tlabel  ultimately end the
group. This necessitated changing a number of commands that call for
tlabels: I thought it more efficient to say

  \if@mfp@mplabels\expandafter\@tlabels\else\@@tlabels\fi...

than to call  \tlabel  directly. But now that would unbalance the
grouping.

Somehow I overwrote the version of  mfpic.tex  in which I made the above
three paragraphs of changes with the previous version. So I did it all
again, but now it does the following.  \tlabel  starts a group and calls
two different commands: if no  "[]"  follows, it defines  \tlabel@rot
to be empty under  \nomplabels;  and if  "[]"  follows, it calls
\tlabeljustify.  Finally it calls either  \@@tlabel  or  \@tlabel,
depending on mplabels, feeding the arguments  \tlabel@vpos,
\tlabel@hpos  and  \tlabel@rot.  This ensures that insufficient optional
parameters produce default results, as  \tlabeljustify  does default
things with empty parameters.

In  grafbase: push  vtr  in  bcoords  command and pop it in  ecoords.
Added  vtr:=ztr shifted -zconv((0,0));  to  apply_t.  It seems  coords
and  apply_t  were broken ever since I defined  vconv  in terms of  vtr
instead of  zconv.

Added  \@firstoftwo and \@secondoftwo and rewrote several commands to
use them, including  \@if@mfp@beforefileopen..

REVISION 0.5.0 beta, Sept 24--Oct25, 2001:

Change comment written at the top of the output file.  Now includes the
name of the output file, as well as the  \jobname  of the TeX source
that produced it.

Changed how  \grid  handles optional point size. Now it writes a command
vgrid  that takes the extra parameter (and the old  grid  just calls
vgrid  with default parameter).

Made  \mfpic  and  \endmfpic  write the source line number to the
output for debugging use.

Added token list  \every@tlabel  and a command  \everytlabel  for
setting it (and writing the settings to the  .mp  file when  mplabels
is in effect.) In order to make this local to mfpic
environments, now  \mfpic  writes  "verbatimtex \begingroup etex"  to
output and  \endmfpic  ends the group (under  mplabels).

Renamed  \if@graphfileexists  to  \ifmfpicFirstTime  which
required reversing the sense of all  \if...  tests. This will allow the
user to override the behavior of mfpic in unusual circumstances.

Restored the command that expands to a backslash with category 12, for
writing the outer token  \newtoks  to the output file.

Because  \mfsrc  ends with  \ignorespaces  (should it?)  commands
can generate a space under metafont but not under metapost with
mplabels  (because they write TeX code to the output). I have therefore
started to look out for such differences and am adding  \ignorespaces
when I notice them.

Released to CTAN, Oct ??, 2001.


REVISION 0.5.01 beta

This modification actually occurred in February 2002, but I made it on
version 0.5.0, correcting a small bug by adding some braces around the
point arguments of  \tlabel  in a couple of places. The problem was that
Metapost code in the point argument could contain parentheses or commas,
and these had to be hidden inside braces. The code of \tlabels  and
other commands would read this argument twice so two levels of braces
were needed, but that would cause errors in other contexts. The internal
braces in the right places meant the user need only use one. All of this
was only a problem with  mplabels.


REVISION 0.5.02 alpha, Oct 26--Nov 8, 2001:

Put most of the catcode changes (in the "paranoia" section of
mfpic.tex)  in a command  \mfp@sanitize  for possible reuse.

In preparation for a planned enhancement, I have divided  \@figmac into
three parts: the set-up, write, and post-write phases. The idea is that,
e.g.,  \@curve[1.2]  will do the setup, and write the code
tcurve(1.2, false)  but not the points or the ending semicolon, then
close with the all-purpose macro  \@figmacdata.  This macro will scoop up
the last parameter (listing the points), write them to output, adding
the semicolon, and then issue the post-write code.  Why?  Ultimately I
would like to be able to present the data in more than one form.
\@figmacdata  would detect the form and do the appropriate thing. In
particular I would like to be able to do something like
\curve[1.2]\datafile{file.dat}  to draw a curve connecting the points
listed in  file.dat.

Have actually changed the definition of  \curve  and  \cyclic  to use
this scheme, although  \@figmacdata  just writes the inline data points
to output. Shouldn't be unusually hard to make it open the file handle
and call  \mfp@rwdata.  I will first try to organize the opening,
reading, writing and closing of files into reusable modules.


REVISION 0.5.03 alpha, Nov 8, 2001--???:

Further modified  \@figmacdata:  Split it in two. First,  \mfp@writelist
writes the list, enclosed in parentheses and followed by a semicolon,
then issue  \@figmacend.  This is because lists are also used by
"non-figmacs", like  \xmarks  and  \point.  For these I just use
\mfp@writelist.  Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to include  \@figmacend  on
those, but I wasn't prepared to chance it. Also put the common
combination  \@figmacstart\mfsrc{#1}\@figmacdata in a new macro
\@listmac.

Now all those macros that take a list as last argument (thank goodness
it always _is_ the last argument) follow the scheme. This includes
\xmarks,  \ymarks,  \lmarks,  \bmarks,  \rmarks,  \tmarks,  \point,
\plotsymbol,  \piechart,  \barchart,  \polyline,  \polygon,  \fcncurve,
\curve,  \cyclic,  \qspline,  \closedqspline,  \cspline,
\closedcspline,  and  \turtle.  Ultimately, I may make  \@figmacdata
write data from a file (if the next token is  \datafile)  or data listed
inline as if in a file (if the next token is  \inline).

I rewrote the code in  \@mfpic  that loads the figure into  \@wholegraph
so that when  \ifmfpicdraft  is true then it is skipped completely and
\@wholegraph  is just set to an empty box. Then, at the end of  \@mfpic,
if  \ifmfpicdraft  is true, the figure number in  \tt  is set as a
\tlabel  (so the size of the figure will automatically adjust to
accommodate it).

Oops! Had to change the above behavior:  \tlabel  doesn't expand its
contents when writing to the  .mp  file in  mplabels.  So it is
impossible to get  \mfp@count  (the picture number) written as a number.
Rather than have to write the definition of  \mfp@count  to the output
file, I changed the code that loads the figure into  \@wholegraph  to put
the figure number into the box as straight text. Now, the figure number
may again overwrite the boundaries of the box, but that's OK, I guess,
since it's just a temporary situation.


REVISION 0.5.04 alpha, ???--April 11, 2002:

Added  \@XP  which expands to three  \expandafters.

Changed what the  truebbox  option writes to the  .mf  file. The scope
in Metafont should now more closely match the scope in TeX.

Added options  draft,  final,  and  nowrite  (as well as command
versions  \mfpicdraft,  \mfpicfinal,  and  \mfpicnowrite) which should
avoid including the pictures  (draft)  or include the pictures (final),
overriding automatic decisions. Option  nowrite  avoids writing anything
to the  .mf  file.

Made several assignments, such as  \mfp@count,  \@graphfont,  etc.,
global, in case the command  \opengraphsfile  is issued inside a group.

Rewrote  \tlabel  and friends so that the point arguments could
optionally be enclosed in braces. This was done by checking for a left
parenthesis with  \mfp@ifnextchar  and branching on that. This allowed
me to change the  gblabel  command to accept a list of points, and now
\tlabel  can, under  mplabels  accept a list of points in braces.

Completely reorganized the data file reading macros (much smaller and
free of  \loop...\repeat  constructs). Also added the previously
mentioned capability to replace any list after a macro such as
\curve{...}  with the construct such as  \curve\datafile{<file>}  to
construct the list from the data in file

Changed explicit value of 5 data points per line to the value of
\mfpdataperline when plotting data files.

Added error messages  \nodatafileerror  and  \emptydatafileerror.

Added command  resizedrawpen  to  grafbase  to unclutter the
output file.

Collected the common code in  \xmarks,  \ymarks, etc., so that now they
are implemented with  \marks x,  etc.

Added aliases  \lattice  and  \gridpoints  for  \grid.

Changed the option handling in  \tlabel  so that it is translated into
integer values and  \ifcase  can be used, making for simpler conditional
code. Added  \mfp@justifyerror  to the  \tlabeljustify  command, to
occur if an invalid letter is used.

Added  \extra@tlabel  command at the end of  \@tlabel  and  \@@tlabel.
Redefining this makes it easier to write macros looping through many
\tlabel  commands.


REVISION 0.5.05 alpha, April 16, 2002:

Corrected bug in  \mfpverbtex  which caused  #  symbols to be doubled in
the output: simply change catcode of  #  before reading the  verbatimtex
material into the token list.

Remove  \DeclareGraphicsRule  commands issued in  mfpic.tex  so
as not to interfere with the graphics package error checking. Instead
the equivalent is done inside a group for each picture with
\@namedef{Gin@rule@.\mfp@count}.

Added a command index to  \mfpicdoc.tex.  The distribution now includes
a recent version of  eplain.tex  for the indexing macros and the actual
index  mfpicdoc.ind.  The  makeindex  style file that was used,
mfpic.ist,  is also included.


REVISION 0.5.06 alpha, April 16--May 7, 2002:

After installing new MiKTeX and forgetting to set localfont, I found
that  textrect,  textoval  and  textellipse  (in  grafbase.mf)  fail due
to arithmetic overflow. This is because rather simple text can be (say)
40pt  by  40pt.  Since that is  400 by 400 pixels  (under mode:=ljfour),
and we have to compute numbers on the order of their product, we exceed
the 32K limit on numbers. Changed these commands to do computations in
graph coordinates. That is at least resolution independent. Also change
some formulas involving  sqrt  to instead use  ++  or  abs  to minimize
such problems.

Updated most docs. Changed  mfpic.ist  so it will write an mfpic package
comment to the top of  mfpicdoc.ind.


REVISION 0.5.07 alpha, May 7--June 25, 2002:

Added  \usingpairdefault  to reset the  \using  specification to the
default. Also  \usingnumericdefault  for commands that take a numeric
list (equivalent to  \using{#1 #2}{#1} ).

Documented  \marks<axis>  commands.


REVISION 0.5g alpha, June 26--July 31, 2002:

Changed version numbering scheme so LaTeX file utilities like the
snapshot package are better served.

Change the graphic inclusion to use  \@setmfpicgraphic  which, in
addition to executing  \setmfpicgraphic,  also runs any additional
commands that may be needed and should be transparent to the user. These
include the above setting of the graphics inclusion rule, and now also a
scheme for recovering the bounding box (for future feature allowing
truebbox  without  mplabels).  The graphics package makes this hard by
not saving it globally except in  \@gtempa,  which hardly seems safe to
rely on. Nevertheless that is what I use now, though it doesn't get used
yet.

Changed  \DeclareOption*  to print a warning or a message (depending on
whether  graphics  was already loaded or not) instead of just passing
the option on to  graphics  package).

The default  verbatimtex  stuff that was written to the out file in
\opengraphsfile  is now stored in a token register
\mfp@commonverbatimtex  and then written.

\opengraphsfile  now checks for the existence of a file with the
extension of the current value of  \mfp@count  (default 1) in case the
user changes its value (with  \mfpicnumber)  before that command.
mfpic.tex  now sets it to 1 rather than rely on  \opengraphsfile  to do
so.

Changed  \tlabel  to place its contents in a simple left aligned
\halign.  This makes it possible to right-align or center multi-line
labels with an  \hfill  or  \hfil  on left.

Corrected bugs in file read/write (\plotdata,  etc.): Moved whitespace
resetting to  \@processdatafile,  and changed one  \def  in
\mfp@rwdataloop  to  \edef.

Moved the LaTeX2e graphics rule stuff to  \mfpic,  \usemetapost now just
saves the graphics rule signature ("eps" or "mps") for use in that
stuff.

Remove  eplain.tex,  substituting  indexing.tex  which contains only(?)
macros necessary to process the one indexing command actually used in
mfpicdoc.tex,  and the two-column printing of the index.


REVISION 0.5h alpha, Aug 1--6, 2002:

Added code to  \@setmfpicgraphic  to retain the lower left corner of the
picture under metapost. I did this by redefining  \Gin@def@bp  to make
its definitions (of  \Gin@llx,  etc.) global. Then added that info to
\@xconv  and  \@yconv. This allows  truebbox  to work without  mplabels.
Added code to  graphbase.mp  that keeps track of maximum bounding box of
all the text labels and to adjust the figure's bounding box if that
extends past the boundary of the  mfpic  environment. This allows labels
to expand the size of the graph (as documented) in the remaining case:
with  mplabels  but without  truebbox.

This requires that any user who redefines  \setmfpicgraphic  must also
redefine a command  \getmfpicoffset  that stores the coordinates of the
lower left corner in the macros  \mfpicllx  and  \mfpiclly.

Reverted to the previous  \tlabel  method of producing multiline
labels. The  \halign  method (specifically the  \let\\=\cr)  produces
an error when either of the packages latexsym or amsfonts is used. So it
is not (yet) possible to right align or center multiline labels.

Reverted back when I discovered that  \def\\{\cr}  did _not_ conflict
and seems to work just as well. It is again possible to right align and
center multiline labels.

Added  \gclip  rendering macro (did no one ever miss this?), that clips
the current picture to the interior of the following path. And added an
example to  *objs.tex.



REVISION 0.5i alpha, Aug 7--12, 2002:

Rearranged the endmfpic code of  grafbase.mp  so that  truebbox,  clip
and  mplabels  interact properly, meaning that text which is clipped off
_doesn't_  expand the bounding box.

Announced to mfpic mailing list. Maybe this will become version 0.6 beta.
(Ha!)


REVISION 0.5j alpha, Aug 12--15, 2002:

Changed name of  \marks  command (introduced in 0.5.04) to  \axismarks
to avoid name clash with  \eTeX  primitive command (reported by Guy
Worthington).


REVISION 0.5k alpha, Aug 15--26, 2002:

Rearrangement of  \begingroup-s  at some point caused a problem with
\datafile  commands: the  \@figmacend  was issued inside a group.
(reported by Jaromir Kuben).

I moved the location of  \@figmacstart  and  \@figmacend  and that
solved it but caused a problem with  \plotdata,  which reused that code.
Solved by putting an appropriate  \@figmacend  in the  \plotdata  code.


REVISION 0.5l alpha, Aug 26--29, 2002:

Changed the code that saves the lower left corner of the picture under
metapost. Instead of making  \Gin@llx,  etc., global, I redefine
\Gread@parse@bb  to store them globally in our own macros. This
redefinition happens only in the  \mfpic  environment (in fact only
inside the box where the graphic is included).

I settled on this as having almost no side effects. Perhaps there is a
reason the  \Gin@*  commands are local even though no one on
comp.text.tex came up with one.

Also, since now the only  \begingroup/\endgroup  pair in the
file read/write code is in one place: the  \@processdatafile command, I
deleted all the  \global  in front of  \read  commands.


REVISION 0.5m alpha, Aug 29--30, 2002:

Updates to  *.txt,  readme.1st,  and documentation.

Changed  \mfp@ifnextchar  so that when looking for the next token, it
will skip over  \relax.  This means one can put the optional argument on
another line even when  \preservelines  is in effect (at which time the
line end character is active and has been  \let  equal to \relax)

Change  \@figmaclist  and  \@mfp@writelist  so they preserve lines.
Since all commands that write lists of data to the output file
ultimately run one of these, all those commands preserve lines. Then I
removed  \preservelines  from  \mfpic.  Now we no longer need the
caution about putting a macro and its arguments on the same line.


REVISION 0.5n alpha, Aug 30--Sep 04, 2002:

Allow  \tlabelsep  and  \tlabeloffset  to have any  <dimen>  argument. I
was so stupid: it was just a matter of setting the TeX dimensions first
and then writing their values to the output.

Documented  \mfpdataperline.  Also changed it to a macro rather than a
\count  because LaTeX users are unfamiliar with count registers
(\newcounter,  yes,  \newcount,  no). I could have called it
\c@mfpdataperline,  but then it wouldn't be user-level for plain TeX.

Changed  "\ifnum\mfp@n=\mfpdataperline"  to
"\ifnum\mfp@n<\mfpdataperline" and exchanged the true and false clauses.
Just in case some user sets \mfpdataperline to some number which is not a
positive integer.

Added  \space  to  "\mfsrc{verbatimtex\endgroup\space etex}",  just in
case TeX could enter a state where it doesn't append a space when it
writes the  \endgroup.


REVISION 0.5o alpha, Sep 04--06, 2002:

Corrected  LTXMFobj.tex  and  LTXMPobj.tex.  After testing various
combinations of  mplabels  and  truebbox,  I'd incorrectly added these
options to the former file and failed to restore them to the latter.


REVISION 0.5p alpha, Sep 06--09, 2002:

Added commands  \setpapersize  and  \setpagegeometry  to  header.tex.
Now the preamble of almost every  .tex  file in the docs directory is
reduced to using these two commands.

Deleted old verbatim macros which were no longer used.

Removed  save piecenter;  from grafbase. This variable was documented to
be set by the piechart command, but saving it made it unavailable.

Corrected the example concerning \datafile with  \xmarks:  the
parameters of  \using  needed a space between them.


REVISION 0.5q alpha, Sep 09--12, 2002:

Multiple documentation refinements.

Removed  \if@mfp@metafont,  using only the switch  \if@mfp@metapost.

Added  \mfp@ifdefined:  it checks if a token is neither \undefined  nor
\relax.  Used in macros to detect format. Moved definition of
\@firstoftwo  and  \@secondoftwo  before it.

Made some definitions in \usemetapost global, in case it is
mistakenly issued inside a group.

Removed  \@eatspacedef  since it was used only once to define something,
and it was shorter to define it directly.

Changed all  \ifx  in  \@@arrowoption  to  \if  in case someone wants to
pass the the letter as a macro

In axis code, changed  `\x  to simply  `x  lest  \x  have some
definition and some TeX state causes it to be expanded.

Gave  \newsavepic  a definition closer to  \newsavebox,  which uses
\@ifundefined  rather than strictly testing against \undefined.


REVISION 0.6 beta, Sep 12, 2002:

Uploaded to CTAN.


REVISION 0.6a alpha, Sep 12--Nov 5, 2002.

Added  \let\par\relax  in the definition of  \@mfpic  to
nullify blank lines in user code. Needed since I stopped using
\preservelines.  (Reported by Jaromir Kuben.)  Put in commands to
restore  \par  to its normal meaning in labels and captions.


REVISION 0.6b beta, Nov 6--, 2002.

Incorrect sign on sinh function in grafbase.

REVISION 0.6c beta, Nov 6--, 2002.

Bounding box had the horizontal and vertical data reversed if all
of the following three options were selected: metapost, mplabels and
clip.

REVISION 0.63 alpha

Mfpic:

Added code to write into the graphs file a test of the major version
number (to assure that the files mfpic.tex and graphbase.mf/p  are
comparable).

Added a switch \in@mfpicenv that is true inside an mfpic environment and
false outside. This allows macros to make global changes outside and
local changes inside, helping TeX and Metafont stay in sync. Modified
some commands to use it (clip and truebbox options, so far). Added
\mfp@local  which expands to nothing inside and  mfpic  environment and
to  \global  outside.

Changed  \@dummy  to  \mfp@dummy  (mfpic.tex)  lest its name clash with
other packages.

Added a  \partialpath{a,b}  command. It's argument is two fractions
separated by a comma and produces the subpath of the following path  f
that goes from  a*length(f)  to  b*length(f). (Hmmm...so
\partialpath{1,0} would inefficiently reverse a path!)

Also added  \subpath{a,b}  to give the equivalent of the MF code
   subpath (a, b) of <following path>

Added command  \closed[<tension>]{<method>}  where <method> is l,  b,
s,  cb,  or  u  so that, for example,  \closed[2]{s}  does the same as
\sclosed,  except that added or modified links will have tension equal
to 2. Then I defined the previous commands in terms of this one (tension is
ignored for  \lclosed  and  \cbclosed  since they specify exactly what the
link should be.)  Default for <tension> is 1.

Moved  \fdef  to a global location and added  "save #1;"  to its
definition. Functions defined with it should now be local if it is used
in an  mfpic  environment and global otherwise.

Redefine  \+  for entire  mfpic.tex.  Avoids somewhat complicated
work-around of its outerness in  \usemetapost.  Restore previous meaning
at end of file.

Added  \@bsphack  and  \@esphack  (as in LaTeX).

Rewrote \tlabelrect, etc., so that they take a second optional
parameter: the label justification. Made the current  \tlabel  defaults
the default for  \tlabel<path>  also. Might change this to  [cc]  after
talking to Jaromir.

Changed  \store  to be usable as a prefix command. It still takes a
second argument but doesn't wrap anything around it, so
\store{m}\circle{...}  is as valid as  \store{m}{\circle{...}}.  But now
    \xscalepath{0,2}\store{m}\circle{...}
is also valid, storing the untransformed circle. It is written as a
\@rendmac  so that it turns off automatic path rendering. It invokes a
new grafbase command  stored , which stores the path and passes it on
(as the other prefix macros do). This may have restored the old behavior
(prior to 0.2.9.10 alpha), but I can't tell, since I never had any
experience using those versions and don't know why the change was made.

Streamlined  \arrow  so that instead of a chain of 4 macros (that all
did the same thing!), each calling the next, it loops until no more
optional arguments are found.

Renamed  \mfpicdebugwrite  to \mfpDBwrite  to streamline the source
file. Later renamed to  \mfp@DBlog  to remind me that it only writes to
the  .log .

Change  \getmfpicoffset  and  \preparemfpicgraphic  so they take an
argument: the name of the figure file. The default versions do nothing
with it. Changed  \@setmfpicgraphic  so it calls them with the name of
file. In case a power user needed the file name in his redefinition.

Shortened  \usemetapost.  Defined as much as possible outside it, and
include only what needs to be changed. E.g., we no longer redefine
\@setmfpicgraphic  inside it (nor  \preparemfpicgraphic  in the
non-LaTeX version).

Rearranged code so that  \usemetapost  is defined in three ways instead
of two: LaTeX2e, plain pdfTeX and plain TeX. Formerly the second two
were combined in one which contained an \ifpdf-\else-\fi construct. That
is now moved to an outer level. Shortened the name of  \if@mfp@pdftex  to
\if@mfp@pdf  since pdftex could be used to produce dvi output, and we
want this to be true only when pdf is being produced.

Added  \mfcmd  (adds semicolon to argument) and  \mflist (wraps argument
in parentheses). Done so that we can delay reading the argument and
therefore preserve lines. Both of these and  \mfsrc  now call  \@mfwrite
with an appropriate argument. It initiates  \preservelines  and
continues with  \@mfcmd,  \@mflist,  or  \@mfsrc.  These read the
argument and end with  \@mfsrc,  which ends line preserving.

Rearranged code of  \@figmac.  It now issues  \@startfigtrue  before
writing its argument and doesn't do  \@imrendtrue.  This allows it to
end with the code to read the argument, and avoids some cases of having
to read large arguments before  \preservelines  is issued.  There was
only one case where the timing mattered:  \connect,  and there we needed
the current order!

Simplified the scheme for list macros (\mfp@writedata). The above
rearrangement meant there was no longer any need for different treatment
of figmacs and non-figmacs.

Grafbase:

Added code to grafbase file to test if the major version of mfpic
(assuming it is input by an mfpic generated file) and that of
grafbase.mf/p  are comparable. Added a boolean MFPIC that is true if
the test succeeds. Not used yet.

Rewrote most of the arc commands in grafbase, focusing on trying to make
any points that were explicitly specified into actual nodes of the path
(i.e., use nothing that could result in round-off error) plus trying to
increase robustness.

"Corrected"  cbclosed  command in grafbase. Its code used to put in one
cubic B-spline link and connect that to the beginning and end of the
path  f  with two ordinary MF Bezier path joins. Now it connects with
three cubic B-spline links, the middle one being the same as before.

removed  w,  d,  and  h  as internal variables because of another user
name clash, this time with  \fdef(h)... .

Rewrote grafbase messages and error messages for consistency and
pithiness.

Changed gblabel to newlabel, but gblabel remains as an interface for old
files, calling newlabel. There are now three parameters rather than four
for horizontal and vertical adjustment. The first gives the fraction
of the text left of the point of placement. The third is a
boolean. If false, the second parameter is taken as the absolute
fraction of the text below this point. If true, it represents the same
except the depth of the text is ignored. This  (.5,0,true) gives  [Bc]
placement, while  (.5,0,false)  gives  [bc].

Added textrectx, textellipsex and textovalx which now allow horizontal
and vertical adjustment and rotation, just like gblabel. The original
commands just call it with the old default (centered, not rotated).

Rewrote nearly all error messages in  grafbase.mf/p. Changed "GUBED" to
"END DEBUG". (That has always bothered me.)

Reintroduced "bounds" to the mfpic file. It seemed a reasonable
shorthand, replacing four lines of code with one. And has been around
forever.

Reexamined clipping, trying to make sure that when ClipOn is true,
nothing is written outside the clipping paths. Except there are things
drawn for debugging purposes, so I added  noclip() which executes its
contents in a group where ClipOn is set to false. Added  DoClip(v)  as a
shorthand for:
    if ClipOn and (ClipPath > 0) : clipsto (v, ClipPath); fi
Correspondingly changed several commands to write to a temporary picture
variable, which is then DoClip-ed before adding to active_plane. This
turned out to be a prescient act for the purpose of using color in MF
(see below).

Changed  P1  in  headpath  (giving the direction of the arrowhead)
from  "direction n of g"  to  "point n of g - precontrol n of g".
This gives the arrowhead from  \arrow\rect{...}  a reasonable direction
without having to rotate it +/- 45 degrees.

Determined that the filling commands  shade , polkadot  and  tess  (all
these are my doing) did not respect  aspect_ratio.  Changed all of
them to invoke a macro,  filledwith,  that returns a rectangular picture
tiled with shifted copies of a given picture. This macro respects
aspect_ratio  (i.e, invokes  .t_  where it should -- I hope).

Introduced color to Metafont (gray levels only): made  color synonymous
with  numeric; assigned numeric gray levels to the variables  red,
green,  etc.  Defined the color commands (rgb,  RGB,  cmyk,  gray  and
named) to produce appropriate gray levels. Added macro  makegray  for
this purpose. Allow  black  or  white  in drawing commands and gray
levels in filling commands. Gray fill is implemented by a new macro
shaded  which is similar in some ways to the internal code of  shade and
may one day replace it. Right now  shade  uses round dots and respects
shadewd  and the spacing parameter. But  shaded  just builds a square
picture which is either two black almost-squares in a white background
(gray levels > .5) or two white almost-squares in a black background.
Works well in simple tests so far.

Changed the code executed if  mode  is unknown back to switching on a
default mode, but this time  ljfour  instead of  cx.

Removed the  aspect_ratio  scaling from  resizedrawpen,  and also from
the definition of  drawpen  and  hatchpen.  Added that scaling to
shpath.

Added  partialpath  and  gsubpath  to support  mfpic's  \partialpath
and  \subpath .

Docs:

Changed this file  (changes.tex)  from a .tex file to a .txt file for
simplicity of maintenance.

Transcribed  mfpicdoc.tex  to a LaTeX file adding  mfpdoc.sty  to preserve
most of the previous formatting. Adds a table of contents; allows an index
without the extra files  indexing.tex  and  mfpic.ist  (both now removed).
Added hyperref, producing a linked  .pdf  file if pdflatex is used. Did
the same with  grafdoc.tex  and  mf-revu.tex,  except the latter has no
index.  Have removed  mppicdoc.tex  since the small part of it that was
not already covered in  mfpicdoc.tex  has been added in an additional
appendix.

Made  mfpic.dtx,  mfpic.ins  and  grafbase.dtx  files. Processing
mfpic.ins  produces  mfpic.tex  and  mfpic.sty  from  mfpic.dtx,  plus
grafbase.mf,  grafbase.mp  and dvipsnam.mp  from  grafbase.dtx.

REVISION 0.64 alpha

Grafbase:

Rewrote the mfpic macro \polkadotwd  so all it does is set the width
(omitting the code "thepolkadot := setdot(...)"). The grafbase  polkadot
command now remakes the dot each time it is run. This is really just for
simplicity (for the \cs{polkadotwd} macro). Same was done for  \shadewd
and  shade.  To change the shape of the dots used, I've added
shadedotpath  and  polkadotpath  in addition to dotpath.  The last is
now only used for dotted lines and  grid.

Added command  threeangles (suffix s) (expr A, B, C)  that finds the
three angles of the triangle ABC and assigns them to the  s1,  s2,  and
s3.  Now used in  arcppp  and the new command  circleppp . Later
threeangles  was replaced by three calls to a new vardef:  cornerangle
(A,B,C) , which was useful on its own.

Added circleppp producing the circle through three points.

Added  circlecp  producing the circle with center at a given point, and
passing through a given point.

Added  circlepps  producing the circle completing the arc produced by
the corresponding  arcpps. These three form their circle from arcs,
ensuring that the circle (a) begins at the first given point on the
circumference, (2) has all the given points as nodes (though more may
have to be added, of course), and (iii) it is at least as robust as the
arc commands, into which a lot of thought was put.

Added commands that produce circles related to triangle. A triangle  Q
is, by definition, required to be a closed path in the form
Q0--Q1--Q2--cycle.

circumcircle Q      produces the circle through all three corners
incircle Q          produces the inscribed circle (inside the triangle
                    and tangent to all three sides)
excircle n of Q     produces the exscribed circle opposite Q[n] (tangent
                    to Q[n-1]--Q[n+1], and to the extensions of
                    Q[n]--Q[n-1] and Q[n]--Q[n+1] outside the triangle)
ninepointcircle Q   The circle through the base of all three altitudes,
                    through all three midpoints of the sides and through
                    the points on each median that is halfway
                    between the corner and the common intersection of
                    the medians.

And commands that produce points related to a triangle:
incenter Q              center of  incircle Q (= intersection of angle
                        bisectors)
circumcenter Q          center of  circumcircle Q
excenter n of Q         center of excircle n of Q
ninepointcenter Q       center of  ninepointcircle Q

None of the triangle related command integrated into mfpic yet.

Added command  pathcenter c  which obtains the center of a circle  c
(or a rectangle  c!)  by finding the intersection of the perpendicular
bisectors of two chords. It will happily find the "center" of any path.

Mfpic:

Rewrote  \function,  \plrfcn  and  \parafcn  so they all simply define
\mfp@fcnname  to the appropriate grafbase command name and call the
same macro to write the code. As with a lot of other commands, we now
write the old shorter commands when the new parameter (in this case the
tension) is absent:  \function {...}  produces "function (true) (...)"
while \function[s1.5]{...} produces "tfunction (true) (1.5) (...)".
In retrospect it would have made cleaner code if I had placed the extra
"t" at the end of the name and the tension parameter at the beginning of
the parameters.

Made similar changes to  \btwnfcn  and  \plrregion .

All the commands that have an optional argument for the color (\draw,
\gfill,  \arrow  and all the hatching commands) now have an empty value
for color as the default. When the color is empty we write the old
simpler commands. That is, "\draw..." or "\draw[]..." produces
"drawn ..." rather than "colordrawn (drawcolor) ..." Trying to
streamline the output file.

Added optional argument to  \circle  (similar to the ones for  \arc). So
the circle through three points can be easily drawn, filled, etc.

Renamed  \@graphdp  to  \@graphbot,  since it is not the TeX depth, but
the coordinate of the bottom recalculated after each  \tlabel .  Also
\@graphht -> \@graphtop for the consistency.

Streamlined some aspects of tlabel macros, reducing number of
macros in the chain. Also keep track of the  \@graphleft, etc.,
calculations so that we can later set the label on the graph with only
two kerns and no \if-clauses.  \tb@moveright  is the accumulated value to
kern horizontally, and  \tb@raise  is the amount to move vertically.

Streamlined \tlabel<path> macros, including consolidating main code into
one, rather than two alternative macros.

Added  \@firstofone  and use it in place of  \mfp@identity .  Also use it
when passing a pair of coordinates for  \tlabel : provides grouping that
is not stripped by parameter matching, but also not written into output
file.

Assigned numbers to axes:  x=0,  y=1,  l=2,  b=3,  r=4,  t=5 .  Defined
\get@axisnum  similar to  \tlabeljustify  to assign the numbers, and can
now use  \ifnum  in  \axis  and  \ifcase  in  \axislabels  to branch on.
This also consolidates the error message in one place.

Rewrote the \endmfpic debug messages to give me information I want to
see: compare \@graphleft and \@graphright with \wd\@wholegraph, etc.

Rewrote  \plottext  under the assumption that all points are specified
as in other plotting commands: pairs separated by commas (i.e., no
braces). Changed docs to reflect it.

Redid  \axislabels  so that it could proceed gracefully on an empty
argument.  In fact...

Added  \mfp@ifempty  as an abbreviation for
    \if~#1~\@xp\@firstoftwo \else \@xp\@secondoftwo\fi
to make several such changes possible.  Redid  \do@mtparam  using it.  


Docs:

Documented some aspects of MF naming conventions (basically: no
suffixes) and suggested only letters be used.


REVISION 0.65 alpha

Mfpic:

Rename \mfp@metaposttrue to \mfp@mposttrue, etc.

Since  \@mfp@mposttrue  is never otherwise used, we don't define it
(i.e., remove \newif command), instead, replace its use in
\mfp@mposttrue with \global\let\if@mfp@mpost\iftrue . Similar
changes for the false version and for other switches: \if@mfp@clip,
\if@mfp@centcapt (formerly \if@mfp@centercaptions), \if@mfp@mplabels

Added  \mfp@ifmpost{1}{2}  as shorthand for  \if@mfp@mpost 1\else 2\fi.
Added  \@ifmplabels{1}{2}  as shorthand for  \if@mfp@mplabels 1\else 2\fi.

Added  \xxxfalse  (initializations). Though unnecessary, it provides
documentation of the default.

Renamed  \@if@mfp@beforefileopen  to  \@if@mfp@filenotopen  (since it
could conceivably have been previously opened but then closed).

Added  \setdatadashes,  \setdatacolors,  and  setdatasymbols,  to allow
the user to set the dashing style, colors and symbols used when
\dashedlines,  \coloredlines , or \pointedlines  (or  \datapointsonly),
respectively,  are in effect. (later removed them, see below).

Added  \@nameuse  and  \@namedef  and replaced a several lines of code
with shorter versions using them.

Added  \@ifmtarg  (from  ifmtarg.sty)  and use it when possible instead
of  \mfp@ifempty

Reordered much of both  mfpic.dtx  and  grafbase.dtx  (many times!) to
make documentation more natural.

Rather extensive revision of  \axislabels , mainly so that braces around
the text argument are not prematurely stripped (bug introduced when we
tried to "gracefully" handle empty portions of the arguments).

Added  \@makeother  and used it in \mfp@sanitize.

Removed a number of  \newif's : those whose values are always set by
another command. These commands now contain  \let\ifxxx\iftrue  instead
of  \xxxtrue . This saves a couple of strings of pool.

Added  \mf@T  for the frequently used string  "true" , and  \mf@F  for
"false" .

Removed  grafdoc.tex  from the manifest  (grafbase.dtx  documents the
grafbase macros). Also removed  mf-revu.tex  (because I'm lazy).
But will add  mfpguide.tex  as a short intro/tutorial.

Set  \@mfp@verbtexfalse  after writing the verbatimtex in
\opengraphsfile (in case it a user tries to have more than one
\opengraphsfile  command in a document).

The utility  \mfp@gettoks  that was only used in  \tmtitle  and
\mftitle  has now been used to abbreviate similar  \afterassignment
constructs elsewhere.

Rewrote  \curve  and  \cyclic  so both call the same command (as was
done some time ago with  \polyline  and  \polygon  though not documented
until now).

Rewrote  \noship  and added  \stopshipping  and  \resumeshipping  so that
shipping can be turned off for several figures.

Simplifies  \mfpdatacomment  so that it just sets the register
\@datacommentchar  to the character code.  Then  \mfp@setcomment
changes the category of  \@datacommentchar  to 14 (comment).

Added  \transformpath , similar to  \applyT  except that it is a
modification macro for figures. It's argument is a transformer

Added  \cutoffafter {<obj>}  and  \cutoffbefore {<obj>}  as prefix
macros that cut the following path after its intersection with the named
<obj>  (a name defined with  \store)

Added  \trimpath{<dim1>,<dim2>} , a prefix macro that removes the part
of the following path within  <dim1>  of its start and within  <dim2>
of its end.

Grafbase:

Added  transformedpath (transformer) expr f  that reads a path  f , applies
the transformer and returns the result. This is to supply the correct
syntax for the  \transformpath  macro.

Added  gbcutafter  and  gbcutbefore . Unlike the similarly named MP
macros, these try to cut off as much as possible. Later changed the
names to cutoffafter and cutoffbefore, but gave them standard mfpic
syntax:  "vardef cutoffbefore (expr b) expr f =".  Also reverted to
essentially the same as the MP definitions.

Added  trimmedpath (expr a,b)  to implement  \trimpath .

Rewrote  textovalx  and  textellipsex  so they now simply call a common
command,  xellipse  with a switch set that affects only two lines of the
calculations.

Slightly revised MF handling of colors. Now the only real difference
between MF and MP is in one macro,  makeclr , plus the "color" keyword
("color" still means "numeric" in MF).  What makeclr does is accept
three parameters and calculate a gray level in MF, but simply return a
color triple in MP. Then  rgb(r, g, b) means
  makeclr(snapto(r), snapto(g), snapto(b))
while all other color functions (except  named ) call  rgb .


REVISION 0.66 alpha

Grafbase:

Will try to converge behavior of labels between options  mplabels  and
nomplabels . Therefor, we add the labels in grafbase on top of the
drawing, after any clipping. We do this in  newgblabel (oh, yes, I
renamed newabel to newgblabel)  by adding the label to their own
picture:  currentlabels. Then  currentlabels  is added onto the picture
as the very last thing in  endmfpic .

Added  emin(x,y)  and  emax(x,y)  as  somewhat more efficient versions
of  min()  and  max() .  They are vardefs and take two expression
arguments rather than a text parameter with an arbitrary list.

Added the possibility for  textrectx  to be given "maximally" rounded
corners: each quarter circle meets the one at the nearest corner so the
end is a semicircle. This is done by allowing the radius parameter to be
a boolean. When it is true, maximal roundedness is used, when false the
corners are not rounded. Provided a  mfpic  interface by defining the
boolean variable  roundends,  which is true by default.

Added  TruncateWarn  and  NoCycleWarn , that print common warning
messages.

Added  pointcolor , the color in which points are drawn by  pointd  and
in which symbols are drawn by  plotsymbol . Now implement  pointd  with
plotsymbol .  However  plotnodes , being a drawing command, uses
drawcolor .

Removed  "withcolor fillcolor" from the definition of  interior , which
is normally only used in  grafbase.mp  in some other command that has a
color parameter. The only really "benefit" of having it there was a
dubious one:  plotsymbol  produced  fillcolor  solid symbols and
drawcolor  open ones. Now all are in  pointcolor . Also moved a couple
of other instances of  withcolor  out of low level commands and into
higher level commands.

Removed the color parameter from  thatchf . For MF to respond to
hatchcolor , the color has to be invoked when the hatching is added to
active_plane , and only the higher level command,  thatch , does that.

Rearranged some of  grafbase.dtx  for documentation purposes. I am
trying to follow this order: bitwise operations, picture manipulation
commands with use-motivated names, and then the rendering commands that
use those to manipulate  active_plane, finally followed by the graph
coordinate rendering commands.

Added vardefs  pnt@#(f) ,  pre@#(f)  and  post@#(f)  as abbreviations
for  point @# of f ,  precontrol @# of f  and  postcontrol @# of f .

Changed a few "max (x,0)" to "abs(x)".  These had mostly been not
well-thought-out attempts to gracefully handle erroneous negative values
of "x". The "abs(x)" versions avoid problems in more situations

Mfpic:

I will eventually move the import of the picture from the beginning of
the environment  (\mfpic)  to the end (\endmfpic). Labels (when TeX is
placing them) will be kept in a separate box, and it will be added onto
the picture at the end.

The optional parameter of  \tlabelrect  may now be the literal word
"roundends". This will make the radius of the quarter circles equal to
half the narrower dimension of the rectangle, giving the "rectangle"
semicircular ends.

Added  \pointcolor  for setting the color of points (for \point) and for
symbols  (\plotsymbol), but  \plotnodes  is interpreted as a drawing
command, and so still uses  \drawcolor.

Changed (again!) the name of \@if@mfp@filenotopen, this time to
\@if@mfp@fileisopen, reversing its sense, and reversed the order of all
commands.

Moved the undefining of  \mfp@filename  in  \closegraphsfile  outside
the conditional (just in case).



REVISION 0.67 alpha

Grafbase:

Added  knownarray suffix arr,  which returns a boolean: true if  arr  is
the name of a known array (arr  is numeric and a positive integer and
arr[1]  through  arr[arr]  are known). Added  isdashpat suffix pat,
which applies  knownarray  to  pat.start,  pat.rep  and  pat.finish.

Added  defaultdashes,  defaultsymbols,  and  defaultcolors,  which
contains the code to define  dashtype0, etc.,  pointtype0, etc., and
colortype0, etc.

Added  setdatadashes,  setdatasymbols,  and  setdatacolors  to allow the
user to change the definitions of the  dashtype,  pointtype,  and
colortype  arrays.

Added  getdashpat,  getsymbol,  and  getcolor  which perform the modding
operation that used to be done in TeX for reverting (for example) to
pointtype0  after the ninth curve is drawn by  \plotdata.

Changed  thepolkadot  (in MF) so it is shaded.  But we should make it
cover other contents of a region, and we need to subtract black ones
before we add gray ones. Done.

Added  regularpolygon (expr n) (suffix P) (text eqns),  where  n
is the number of sides,  P  is the name of the array of vertices, and
eqns is a pair of equations specifying either the center,  P0,  and one
vertex, or two vertices.  Vertices are numbered anticlockwise (otherwise
two points are not enough data).

Added variables  default_tension  and  fcn_tension  to be used as the
default in path creation commands instead of the hard coded values 1 and
1.2.

Mfpic:

Realized that the opening code of  \mfpic  no longer needs to know the
setting of  truebbox. No longer make it an error to use it in an  mfpic
environment.

Replaced the three commands  \setdatadashes,  \setdatacolors etc., with
a single command  \reconfigureplot  which takes the word  `dashes',
`colors',  or  `symbols'  for an argument.  Added  \defaultplot  which
takes the same arguments and restores the builtin defaults.

Changed name of  \partialpath  to  \partpath.

Added  \regpolygon{n}{P}{<eqn1>}{<eqn2>}  which writes
reguralpolygon (n) (P) (<eqn1>;<eqn2>;)  (see above).

Moved the loading of the figure to  \endmfpic.  Now  tlabels  are added
to a box  \@alltlabels  which is appended to the figure right after it
is loaded. This helps keep most of the box loading in one place. It also
permits the possibility of adding a write-18 capability for on-the-fly
figure creation.

Added  \mpobj  as a synonym for  \mfobj.

Added  \settension  to set the grafbase variable  default_tension.
and  \setfcntension  to set the grafbase variable  fcn_tension.

Docs:

Started  mfpguide.tex,  a beginner's tutorial.

Renamed  mfpicdoc.tex  to  mfpicman.tex  (can't remember why -- maybe
because I got it confused with  mfpdoc.sty).


REVISION 0.68 alpha

Grafbase:

Improved  fcncurve:  fcncontrol  does `the right thing' when two
successive points have the same x-coordinate. This gives the curve a
decent ending if, instead of extending the sequence by symmetry (in
order to calculate the controls for the endpoints) we extend by making
the additional points equal to the endpoints. Looks _so_ much better!
That was surprising given that all I tried to do was avoid dividing by
0!

Modified  plotnodes  as well as  plotsymbol  so that both store the
relevant pairs in an array and call  dosymbols,  which draws the symbol
at each coordinate in the array.  And  dosymbols  call another command,
addsymbols,  one or two times (once to clear).

Added boolean:  clearsymbols.  When true, those symbols place by
plotsymbol  or  plotnodes  which are `clearable' (open paths that satisfy
their first point equals their last) are first closed and filled with
background color in MP (cleared in MF) before being drawn.

Added complex function  sgn Z : returns 0 if  Z  is  (0,0)  otherwise
unitvector Z.

Modified  shadepic. The main point to make sure we don't divide by 0.
But also, set dimensions for the picture by doing the lowest resolution
first (thus ensuring both dimensions are at least 2 _pixels_).

Modified the arrowhead routine so that when the head is filled, the
extra line that closes the head is also drawn.

Modified  arcpps  so that angles less than 45 are drawn as a single
segment without passing through a midpoint.

Modified  pathcenter c  so it can find the center when  c  is only an
arc.

Added  barycenter expr t  to average the points of the the path  t.

Added  makesector expr p,  where  p  is an arc (or any path). Connects
pathcenter p  to its endpoints.  Could be a little more accurate if we
limited it to  arcpps  and used  arccenter.

Added boolean:  overlaylabels.  When true, labels are added to
current_labels,  which is then overlayed at  endmfpic (new behavior),
when false, labels are added immediately to  active_plane.

Changed these so they produce a path (line segment); used to be they
returned the endpoint. (You can get the point by invoking
"point 1 of altitude n of Q".)

altitude n of Q         the altitude from Q[n] to the opposite side
                        (produced if necessary).
median n of Q           the median from Q[n] to the opposite side
anglebisector n of Q    the angle bisector from Q[n] to the opposite
                        side

Added
    tbezier (expr tens, cyclic) (text lst)
which makes the simple cubic bezier (connects the points in the list
with  ..tension tens.. ), as well as its non-tense counterpart  bezier.
Also added
    mkbezier (expr tens, cyclic) (suffix pts)
which is called by the above after loading the text list in the
the array  pts.

For quadratic  Be'ziers we have  qbezier,  and  mkqbezier.

Removed  fcn_tension,  using instead 1.2*default_tension.  This is for
consistency, all curves responding to the same default

Added  verbatimtex  definition to  grafbase.mf.  It just gobbles
everything to the next semicolon.

Redid  openqbs  and  closedqbs  so they behave like most other
path-making commands: they call textpairs and then some common code,
mkqbs  with the name of an array. Also redid  mkclosedcbs  so it
utilizes  mkopencbs.


Mfpic:

Changed the axis commands so they explicitly call  \arrow.  The purpose
was to ensure that the arrowhead is drawn _after_ the shaft.
Significant only for colored heads. This turns out to make  axis@#  in
grafbase  unnecessary  \arrow[l##1]\@figmac{axisline.##2} is all that is
required.

Added  \makesector,  a  \@closmac  prefix that can make a sector out of
a following arc. Useful when the arc is given without a known center
([t]  or  [s]).

Added  \let\@nl=\@activectrlM  to  \@mfwrite  so that  \@nl  can
be used for line breaks when catcodes of EOL are already fixed (e.g., in
macro definitions)

Added check to  \opengraphsfile  that no previous file is still open.

Added  \clearsymbols  \noclearsymbols  to interface with the  grafbase
clearsymbols  boolean. Added  clearsymbols  LaTeX option

Added  \newdef\pinumber{3.14159}.

Added new option:  overlaylabels  and commands  \overlaylabels  and
\nooverlaylabels.  Similar in implementation to  truebbox:  a TeX
boolean is used only to communicate the setting to  \opengraphsfile
before a file is open. Otherwise a MetaPost boolean (above) is switched
on or off.

Moved  \@processdatafile  outside  \@mfpic@graf@macs. Also moved
\skipBlanksandComments  and definition of  \mfp@data  since they are
used by  \@processdatafile. Also moved  \skipcoomments  because it
seemed it should go along with  \skipBlanksandComments.  Then I rewrote
the latter to actually call  \skipcomments,  so now it _has_ to go where
it goes.

Renamed  \mfp@empty  to  \@empty.

Added  \pairarray{<name>}{<list-of-pairs>}  and
\numericarray{<name>}{<list-of-numbers>}. They define, respectively, an
array of pairs and an array of numbers. They can be used outside an  mfpic
environments (unlike  \patharr), and have the usual scoping properties.

Added  \mfbezier[<tens>]{<list>}  to interface with grafbase's new
bezier  command.  Also  \closedmfbezier.

And the equivalent of (a sequence of) LaTeX  \qbezier:  \qbeziers  and
\closedqbeziers.

Removed  \setfcntension  because  grafbase's  fcn_tension  was removed.
Adjusted docs.

Renamed  \if@mfp@mpost  to  \ifmfpmpost  so power users can use it to
write code dependent on the figure processor. The commands to change it
are still private:  \mfp@mposttrue/false .

Added the test for file being open to  \setmfvariable.  Saves a lot of
tokens.  It seems we never used it without  \@if@mfp@fileisopen. Require
moving it considerably earlier.

Added  \mfp@let  as abbreviation for  \mfp@local\let.  Likewise
\mfp@def.

Renamed  \mfp@addto  to  \mfpaddto  for power users (i.e., me) and added
\mfpmultiply  (same syntax and similar effect).

Renamed  \@if@mfp@fileisopen  to  \@ifmfpfileisopen  (it was just too
many @'s !)

Changed  \everytlabel  so it tests for  metapost rather than mplabels.
This allows it to be used anywhere without worrying whether  \nomplabels
might have cancelled its effect.

Renamed  \massage@data  to  \parse@data.

Make sure every write of  verbatimtex ... etex  ends with a semicolon so
it can be used by  grafbase.mf  (see above).


Docs:

First version of  mfpguide.tex  finished. Writing it exposed a number of
bugs that got by the usual suite of tests. It is the first documentation
that actually shows the code and its result together.

Second version of  mfpguide.tex,  adds appendices.  Planning to ship a
PDF version.


REVISION 0.69 alpha and 0.69a

Mfpic:

Rewrote  \do@ptparam  so its first parameter is the command token (e.g.,
\do@ptparam\@draw{} instead of the old \do@ptparam{@draw}{}). Added a
command  \simple@opt  to process simple optional arguments (those that
don't need further parsing), it calls a second command to read the
option, substitute the default if empty, and then call the command with
the given or supplied option as a normal (brace enclosed) argument. The
idea is to make all empty optional arguments the same as none at all.
Added a command \null@opt which is essentially \do@ptparam with a null
second argument. It turns out that now all commands can be handled by
the last two:  \do@ptparam  and  \alt@ptparam  are not used anywhere
anymore, although the bare "\mfp@ifnextchar[" does appear once or twice.

Make  \gridlines  honor the settings of \axismargin (see grafbase
section below).

Added  \hgridlines  to draw only the horizontal and  \vgridlines  to
draw only the vertical.

Added  \gridarcs  and  \gridrays  to draw only the arcs or rays of a
polar grid.

Added  \setmfboolean  for  \setmfvariable{boolean}.
Added  \setmfnumeric  for  \setmfvariable{numeric}.


Grafbase:

Rewrote  gridlines  to honor the axis margins (laxis,  baxis,  raxis,
and  taxis).

Added  hgridlines (expr ysp)  and  vgridlines (expr xsp)

Corrected  polargrid.  How did it ever last this long without a bug
report? The computation of  rmin  was wrong, and it seems a semicolon
was missing!  Added  gridarcs (expr rstep)  to draw only the arcs, and
gridrays (tstep)  for only the rays.  Complemented  plrpatch  with
patcharcs  and  patchrays  for this purpose.

Corrected  polargrid  again!  It seems the calculation of max and min
angles didn't take into account that  angle (0,0)  was undefined but
could occur in the code.

Redid  resizedrawpen  to  save  drawpen  and  currentpen  (not just
penwd).

Removed  mindiam  and substituted  minpenwd  in the MP version (they
were equal anyway).

Added \InputIfFileExists{mfpic.cfg} in the LaTeX section just before
\ProcessOptions. Added code to detect and input  mfppatch.tex  if it
exists.

Docs:

Added a file plotting example to  pictures.tex  and  lapictures.tex.

Added some of the new commands to  Objects.tex . Converted  Objects.tex
to use built-in  \ifmfpmpost  instead of the ad hoc  \ifmetapost
defined in  TeXMPobj.tex  and  LTXMPobj.tex.

Renamed  mfpicman.tex  to  mfpman.tex.


Distribution:

Packed up for distribution in mfpic69b.zip:

    mfpic.dtx
    grafbase.dtx
    mfpic.ins
    README.txt
    install.txt
    changes.txt
    mfpman.pdf
    mfpguide.pdf
    examlpes\pictures.tex
    examlpes\lapictures.tex
    examlpes\forfun.tex
    examlpes\data.dat
    scr\mfpman.tex
    scr\mfpguide.tex
    scr\refcard.tex
    scr\mfpdoc.sty

And placed on web site.


REVISION 0.69c alpha

Grafbase:

Redid  gendashed  so that it balances speed versus memory: If there are
n  repeated patterns, add  sqrt(_n)  of them to the picture  _v,  then
DoClip (_v); coloraddto (drawcolor) (active_plane, _v); <repeat>.  Doing
that for each pattern was too slow, doing it only once wasted memory.

Put on web site.


REVISION 0.69d

Grafbase:

Modified  barchart  so that the data can be pairs. Interpret  (a,b)
as an interval and creates bars that begin at  a  and end at  b  (Gantt
diagrams).

Added  predirection@# (expr p)  and  postdirection@# (expr p)  which
give correct results *whenever* the path  p  is nontrivial.  Based on
the easily prove fact (which I only recently discovered) that for a
nontrivial single knot with keypoints  A, B, C and D, the direction at A
is towards the first one of B, C or D that is not equal to A. The
predirection[j] returns  (0,0)  if the path is trivial. If the path is
trivial upto time  j,  it returns  postdirection[j].  postdirection[j]
is analogous.

Changed  headpath  to use  predirection[length p](p)  instead of
point length p of p - precontrol length p of p.


Mfpic:

Added  \gantt  (= \barchart)


Distribution:

Placed on web site, announced on c.t.t.


REVISION 0.69e

Grafbase:

Somehow the last version of grafbase included failed to include a
long-ago change to  colorsafefill  in which non-black fills first
subtract the interior under MF. Corrected that.

Experimented with a  O(log n)  loop for  filledwith.  Made no significant
difference in speed in tests. Must be the extra overhead. Keeping old
O(n) method.

Experimented with using  "..tension atleast tens.." in  mksmooth  and
sclosed.  All other tension using operations either call these or
require different treatment. The one case in the test suite where a
visible difference occured, it looked worse. Returned to old method.

Proofed  grafbase.dvi,  the documentation of grafbase macros.


Docs:

Proofed  mfpguide.


REVISION 0.69f

Mfpic:

Made  [cc]  the default for  \tlabelrect,  etc.  Added command
\tlpathjustify  to change the default.

Added code to input local additions, defaults, etc., in  mfpic.usr,  if
it exists.

Changed  \let\par\relax  to  \let\par\@empty at the beginning of
\@mfpic.  It isn't really necessary to use  \relax,  we just want
to disable blank lines, we don't necessarily want to skip over them in
\mfp@ifnextchar.  In fact, for catching errors, it is better if a blank
line stops  \mfp@ifnextchar.

Grafbase:

New definition of  image  (writing on  active_plane)  prevents use of
plain.mp  macros  (draw  and  undraw,  for example) inside it.  Revert
to  plain.mp  version.

Change  patcharcs  and  patchrays  so they draw on a suffix parameter
This avoids the use of  image  and saves memory since drawing on a
picture takes less memory (in some circumstances) than creating a
picture and then assigning it. Actually, the least memory would be to
clip each line as created and add that directly to active_plane.

Re-examined use (or lack of use) of mono().  Added a few.


REVISION 0.69g

Packed it up in mfpic69g.zip and put it on my web site.

Docs:

Added documentation that several arrays become defined after a
\piechart  or  \barchart  command.

Added documentation on  \mfpicversion.  Added a couple of overlooked
\index  entries and a couple of commands omitted from the "by type"
list.

Grafbase:

Modified  piechart  and  barchart  so that the documentation about
arrays was correct  What was missing:  pieangle  and  piedirection
(without numeric suffixes) were not declared, nor given the correct
value.

Modified code of  textrectx  so that documentation of  \tlabelrect  was
accurate: negative values of the optional argument should now produce
indented arcs and reversed path. All that needed doing was reversing the
order of the path connections for negative radii.

Fine tune the calculation of gray level for the MP version of  shade  so
that the result more closely matches the MF version on modern printers
(600+ DPI). Formula is now  gray = 1 - (.88*shadewd/sp)**2, which gives
a lighter gray than before.  We therefore rewrite the MF code to permit
shadewd  to be as high as  sp/.88  before resorting to filling. The
number .88 was empirically arrived at (i.e. I determined what number
made most of the MP and MF shaded figures in Objects.tex look the most
similar on two different printers; then I averaged the two values).

Change  pi  and  deg  to internals (along with  radians).

Make  plrpatch  do what it used to do: draw in  drawcolor.  Also change
polarpatch  back to calling  plrpatch.


REVISION 0.7 beta, 14 Nov 2003

Packed up and put on web page and CTAN.


REVISION 0.7a beta, 16 Apr 2004

Change one semicolon (;) in a string written by  \opengraphsfile  to a
colon (:) to work around a bug in the perl scripts mptopdf and/or
texexec.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              Stuff To Do

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Pie-in-the-sky stuff

A command to obtain the boundary of a region defined by  F(x,y), where
F  is a boolean valued function. Easy if the region is convex.

A command to draw a path paralleling another path.  Will need
predirection  and  postdirection  and some notion of what to do when
they differ. Inside corners/cusps should be easy,

   /\       /\
  /  \ --> /  \
 /    \   / /\ \

outside corners might need some limit on "mitering":
          __         /\
         /  \       /  \
 /\ --> / /\ \  or / /\ \ or a rounded (circular?) connection.


A command to render a path with a "photon"?

Try 'write18' on-the-fly creation of figures? Most straightforward would
be to mimic \opengraphsfile with each \mfpic. That would require
rethinking those commands that write to the graph file _outside_ an
mfpic figure. Maybe redo \mfsrc so it added to some macro or token list,
and write _that_ after the file is opened.

Or maybe:  \opengraphsfile  at beginning of document, then
\closegraphsfile just before processing the figure, then \opengraphsfile
again right afterwards. Then only commands we insert occur when a file
is closed.

Truebbox for MF?  Might be done if every drawing command kept track of
bounding boxes (commands that fill, hatch, etc. already get this info
with  gbbox). Would just need to add it to plotsymbol (for pointd  and
plotnodes) and to the drawing commands (drawn, gendashed, etc.).  Might
want to skip the lower-level things like safedraw, safefill, etc. (or
maybe add it _only_ there). Don't want to do it for anything that
doesn't add to active_plane. But some things only add pictures to
active_plane and by then it's impossible to determine the size. Once a
bounding box is known, endmfpic can adjust tfm dimensions. and shift the
picture before shipout.