USE OF FILES

INDEX

WORKING WITH FILES

METAGRAF is an application to create MetaPost files in a simple, straight forward and quickly way without the need to write by hand the different steps of the drawing, as was necessary before. It is a must for some people that need the exceptional quality of metapost but don't have the time to create by hand all their drawings, as myself. Inasmuch MG gives some new capabilities to MP making use of facilities outside MetaPost scope but available for other programming languages, in particular Java. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized the fact that MG will never subtitute MP as a whole. For very special drawings, the need to "write by hand" will be always maintained. And, what is more important, many people find a special joy in doing that. (MG has not been created to distroy any kind of human joys).

Having stated the goal of MG it is time now to know how the final drawings, the files with the drawings at medium or final state, are manipulated: saved, named, recovered...etc. This chapter is about all that.

As MG is NOT a WYSIWYG graphical editor, (althought it could be, always with some differences to the final "product"), the usual way of working with it is using quite frequently the "GV"/"GHOSTVIEW" application. And this is so to see the aspect of the "real" drawing at any stage. (Having been written in Linux, the use of "gv" is extremely simple and very quick. Sometimes, testing MG in Win* it has been remarked a not so quick launching of ghostview. This problem is out of our scope and it would be a nice service if "someone" could improve that). As, by the time, MG has not an "undo" capability, the system used is to save the drawing everytime the ghostview application is called. In this way, there will be enough stages of the drawing saved to recover it if something wrong has been done after one of the savings.

When a drawing is saved in MG, it is "totally" saved and so, it can be "totally" recovered. The way that all that works is as follows:

Before the end of the chapter, some remarks must be done in relation with the launching of ghostview/gv and the button "GV-PS" at right. Clicking this button the small window below will show alternatively "gv-tex" or "gv-ps". The former, default one, means that the metapost file will be processed trough "mpost" and then trough "latex", "dvips" and shown the resulting "ps". It is the right position if some text is included in the drawing. Otherwise, the position "gv-ps" is preferred as in this case the file is processed only trough "mpost" and the drawing will be in the same position as in the screen

INDEX