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1. A first test which demonstrates the precission of this approach is to draw any figure in MG without text Then view and save it Then without closing MG use ps2mg on graf 1 1 created and expanding MG recover graf 1 mg Compare the pasted image with the original as it will be placed in exactly the same place Apendix This file will be continued revised with new additions in the future with clarifications of points that can be difficult to understand To do this I need some feedback from the users telling me simply what is not clear or what does not work in their computers Everyone can collaborate NOTE This file has been corrected graciously and with a lot of patience by our dear friend Richard Noel Fell We thank him for his great job Copyright Permission to use copy modify and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted in the terms of the GPL license SANTIAGO MUELAS August 2001 This revision on April 2002 smuelas mecanica upm es INDEX Introduction html 10 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL NEW CAPABILITIES INDEX OBJECTS GEOMETRICALY ATTACHED I feel very proud to be able to present a new and very important capability of METAGRAF I have called it Geometrical attachments The idea is not new at all but his use mixed with MetaPost is totally original Moreover few graphics programs not specialised on this subject
2. In MetaPost the oval is made of four cubic curves that start from the middle points of the sides of a rectangle and end in the points of the neighbour side The control points are choosen following D Knuth algorithm The OVAL because of being built from a rectangle has the same transformations as rectangles so that 1 be circumscribed into a non rectangular paralelogram CIRCLE There re four kinds of circles available in METAGRAF The first and easier one is the oval we ve seen in the previous section We just choose a rectangle that is a square This is a very common trick of graphic programs but it s not comfortable for the user because require grid adjusting all the time to get a real circle Even at that conditions it s not comfortable The standard circle used in METAGRAF is in fact a modified oval The only difference 1s that in this case the rectangle is a square and the relationship among sides has been fixed A complex routine allows the drawing of the circle with most ease as we ll later see On the other hand the system devised for the arc drawing allows 360 degrees arcs that is a circle Finally there s a special circle designed for generating spirals that uses the MetaPost function fullcircle It can be used also as a circle ARC The arc of circle which is translated into a MetaPost limited full circle 1s built drawing a first line that marks the origin des obj2 html 2 of 3 5 30 2002 10 08 34
3. Nevertheless this values can be extended without limitations For doing that it is necessary to use the four small buttons at right so now the function of this four buttons will be explained From top to bottom we find these four buttons e First the one with the icon plus minus over it Each time this button is clicked the effective value selected changes from positive to negative as can be seen in the small window at right under the name SCALE To come back to the original value of the slider it is enough to move it or simpler to click on it As long as this 1s not done the negative value for instance will be maintained e The second button represents a multiplication by 2 so the double of the value chosen manually Once more this new value will be shown in the window SCALE and it can be deactivated in the same way as before e The next button represents a multiplication by 10 and the last one a division by 10 e Any combination of these buttons is allowed and the result at any moment represented in the window mentioned At any moment everything can be deactivated as explained With what has been said it seems that no doubt must remain about Rotations values Lets continue with other transformations SHEAR For this kind of transformation the value introduced with the slider 16 the percentage of shear in the direction choosen related with the perpendicular one So if the value X Shear is selected and the slider is p
4. The file will be processed trough mpost and then latex and after dvips For the user is little difference The only one is that when processing just with MPOST the drawing will be placed in the same position as it was in the screen Processing with latex will put the figure in the upper left corner If we do not want this the simple solution is to place two points objects 1n the upper corners and make their thickness small Doing that the figure will appear in the same place in both cases e IxPth button This button is used when writing curved text or text over a line and we will explain its way of working in the chapters related with text e button We can say the same as in the case before This button will launch a small screen to choose all the parameters related with writing text on the path e Next button is the one with the title CurvEq This is a new button in distribution 1 1 2 and is used to draw lines which mathematical formulae are written on the Text Field Below are two small text fields where the minimum and maximum value of the variable used in the formula always a big X must be written e The three final buttons are Attach Un Gr and Image They are well explained in the file Introduction html With that we will finish what we have call help and control on screen and also the first group of chapters INDEX des inf2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 41 PM OBJECT CREATION INDEX OBJECTS CR
5. controls the position of the glyphs in a line perpendicular to the curve If this value is apprx 3 the letters will be placed in the middle of the curve which is the standard setting Radio button SB controls the position of the string of text related with the origin of the curve If the standard null value is accepted the text will begin at the origin of the curve SG controls the separation between the glyphs CL controls the color of the curve if this one is drawn and TH the thickness If this last value is null the standard no curve will be drawn Any other reasonable value will make appear the curve The way to proceed is to write a value number 2 for example on the text field and click the button chosen for example XS Upon doing this a new value appears on the text field and if we agree with it for another button we can click immediately this other button Usually the best thing is to delete this new value and write the desired one In normal not extremly sophisticated conditions only buttons XS YS and SG are clicked accepting the default values for the others Once given the values we must click once more on the text parameter button what makes the Parameter Adjuster Panel to disappear Our work 15 finished and if we want to see the result the way of doing is to make sure the small window under the GV PS button displays gv tex click the ghost button and ghostview will appear and display our text on the path
6. 0 to 360 degrees e Any color is allowed for its use with any font including math ones Any of this possibilities can be used in the simplest way just clicking a couple of buttons or choosing from a clear menu Regarding curved text there 15 also a big amount of possibilities to choose from with just one restriction This last is clear No mathematical text can be curved how will be a square root of a big fraction curved 90 degrees along its axis althought why not perhaps some day Text along a curved path has in MG the possibilities that follows e Everything mentioned about straight text and related with the different family of fonts applies equally to curved text e Exactly the same applies in relation to scaling or slanting of fonts e Also the same possibilities regarding colors e Once the curved text created and visualized trough ghostview the support curve can be modified in the simplest way to improve the final result tex 2 1 of 3 5 30 2002 10 08 44 PM The path along which the text is placed usually a curve open or closed can be placed at the level of the text middle line or this late can be placed over the curve or under it with different and interesting consequences The beginning of the text can be the same as the beginning of the curve or not It is possible to choose where the text begin It is possible to modify the distance between the glyphs as much as wanted It is also possib
7. Here they are Introduction html 6 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL Introduction html 7 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 METAGRAF S MANUAL The interest of the last one is that it has been done in Windows with no help from anything else other than MG distribution the pictures have been opened with Gimp and saved as JPEG with it The same could be done with Photoshop or any other similar program The pictures are obtained as the special postscript files produced by MetaPost and can be included directly in any LaTeX document if wanted Now let s see how to include JPEG or GIF images in our MG s screen and output the correponding metapost file First of all we strongly recommend to read the User s Manual included in the Web page dedicated to MpFot that can be found at http w3 mecanica upm es metapost mpfot html In the manual is an explaination of how to use the different buttons and sliders Although image different in external aspect in MG identical concepts used When the image button 15 clicked the image panel will appear Clicking the open button an image chooser will appear trough which we can select the picture Choosing the file and clicking the OPEN button in the chooser will launch the image chosen in another panel Then we can modify the image in the way explained in MpFot s page These are the important steps to remember Once the picture is as we want with regard to size co
8. If we want to readjust some value then select the curve click once more to see the Parameter Adjuster and modify any value It is not necessary to repeat clicks on buttons that we don t want to modify Postscript recovering This is a feature added in the very last minute and has not been tested much It will be explained what must be done and I hope to receive some feedback from the users In the scripts directory there is a file with the name ps2mg You can move this file to any place on your path or to let it where it 1s It is an Introduction html 9 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL executable file in Linux A modification of the well known pstoedit from Wolfgang Glunz in a really alpha stage I have not sent anything yet to Wolfgang as it seems not terribly serious as it is If you have a postscript file that is a drawing with lines curved or not you can run ps2mg over it in a standard Linux console and try to paste the result on MG s screen Having ps2mg on your path or on the directory where you are working just write on the Linux console ps2mg f mgraf yourFile ps yourFile mg and press ENTER If the file is created without error messages on the console go to MG and click the open postscript button HA Choose the new file and press O K You will see appear hopefully a new object on MG s screen From this moment on this object is a bezier curve or a polyline of MG and works in the same way
9. does not affect the speed of MG screen To launch the editor s panel the button at right with the tittle EDIT must be clicked Immediatly the panel editor will appear with a quite reduced size This size can be modified at will being the default small to permit to let it in some part of METAGRAF s screen without disturbing The editor has only three options to make it as simple as possible The first one is CLEAR and serves to let the screen blank after something has been written in the quickest way The other two OPEN and SAVE correspond to the usual ones Any text file can be opened in the editor modified and saved with the same or different name Particularly this is useful when at the end of a drawing it is desirable to change a small detail and easy to do it by hand Care must be taken if we modify in some way a file with the editor then continue working in the usual way and finally the file is saved This last file will not have the modifications done already For that reason it 1s convenient to wait until the end or to paste the whole modified figure as a metapost file in the screen but this need a good knowledge of METAGRAF For the reasons just mentioned it is very convenient to delete all files in files directory begining with graf_ this 15 done automatically from version 1 1 1 when a session is finished The file with the bigger number after graf_ is the last saved file Related with the pure application of texts in ne
10. drawn the screen The written text will appear over the line left justified as soon as the right button is clicked Nevertheless in the final MP figure the text will be center justified and the horizontal and vertical center will be the origin of the line just drawn As will be seen the line can have any direction not necessarily horizontal des bot2 html 1 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM HELP METAGRAF 4 The next button is the oblique_arrow button and this 1s a real arrow button Its function is to place arrow heads of many different kinds over the end of open lines or curves Once clicked the arrow panel will be visible This is a quite simple window as it 1s in some way self explaining So at left we find six radio buttons related with the shape of the arrowhead In second place there are also five small buttons to choose the size of the arrowhead and in third place there are six other buttons to choose the angle of the arrow On the upper part we can choose between a typical MetaPost arrow the round one or a totally acute one Beware the length of the total arrow increases slightly breaking the extremely precise joints usually found in MP We will find a solution someday At right top there is a big button to unfill arrows and the other small buttons to choose from a single arrowhead at the last point drawn of a line or a double arrow at both limits Downward it 1s possible to change the point where the arrowhe
11. have it To my knowledge no one appart MG now The idea as has been said 15 simple and to explain it I will use an example If in the middle of a drawing it is wanted to draw a line from one point perpendicular to another line now MG lets do that just by clicking a button The object created the new line has special caracteristics apart from the standard ones that it maintains This new line will go from the point and will be perpendicular to the other line always That s mean if the position of the point or the one of the line 15 changed the created line will change accordingly to acomplish the two conditions mentioned What is not possible is to modify the line created modifying its behavior It can be deleted at any time Otherwise and with respect to metapost it will be a normal usual line colored or not with arrow or without it Plain or not and with its thickness modified or not It will be seen when launching ghostview as any other line At present there exist the possibilities that follow for geometrically attached objects Line that joins two existing points Line perpendicular to another from a point Line that joins the midle point of another from a point Point of intersection of two existing lines Line that bisecs two others Point of intersection between a line and a circle Attention spiral circle only Line tangent to a circle in clockwise or counterclockwise way from a point Same as two last but with the
12. one is very important so its way of working will be explained already First of all it is needed to know how to create an axis For doing so the second button from top and left side in the general toolbar must be clicked Then the mouse must be clicked over the canvas and dragged as if it were a normal right line It will be seen a blue line appear that correspond to the selected axis When the right mouse button 1s clicked the blue line changes to a green one that correspond to non selected axis One point must be mentioned When the axis button is clicked the cursor of the mouse will not change to a cross hair until the screen 1s clicked Once the axis 1s created any rotable object on the screen can be selected and choosing the amount of rotation with the big slider rotated in the usual way clicking in Axis rotation on the transformation window Done in this way the rotation will be a real 3 D rotation but as long as the 3 D capabilities are not used what will be obtained is the projection of the object in space over the screen This 1s useful as it is very easy to change a bezier circle to an ellipse knowing that the big axis of this last will be in the direction of the rotation axis The small axis of the ellipse will be the product of the radius of the original circle multiplied by the cosine of the angle rotated For example 1f an axis at 45 degrees wiht the horizontal is drawn and an angle of 60 degrees is chosen for the r
13. or the Unfill button to let the fonction of the panel in the original state On METAGRAF s screen the arrows will appear as a single blue point where we have placed them 5 This button must be clicked to create a rectangle object that if transformed can be converted to any kind of parallelogram although modifying its attributes When NOT transformed we are in front of the typical rectangle found in so many programs that has its sides parallels to horizontal and vertical axis Just with the pointer of the mouse 1t is possible to change its dimensions size and so on It is very simple to use and convenient for many applications That s the reason why I have maintained it But sometimes this simple rectangle is too simple If working in 3 D but also in 2 D if we want to rotate our objects or just to look at them from another point of view the simple rectangle is useless as it has no permission to change its axis parallel behavior The solution versatility once more is to do an affine transformation Once transformed our simple rectangle changes to a sophisticated one Now it can be rotated through any one of the three Cartesian axis or change its dimensions and or orientation anything BUT everything must be done through affine transformations so we will see how our four points in the corners before presents disappear and we can only translate it in the usual way I repeat any other modification to its size and or shape
14. oval object Circle which radius is equal to the length between two points taking one of them as the center Intersecting point between a vertical and a poly lines One interesting point is that the points or lines created serves also to create new geometrical attached objects in such a way that is possible to have a whole drawing wich all the objects are related and moving just one point the whole figure will change acording with the conditions stablished Usually if one mother object is selected and moved with the mouse the effect will be seen only when deselecting the object Nevertheless if a point is selected and displaced with the use of the arrow keys on the keyboard the whole movement is visible and can be quite astonishing Hereby is an example of a figure where everything is connected newthings html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL To use this new capability there has been provided a new buttons window with icons over the buttons there are self explanatory Here we can see one of them Ba window is launched if the MG icon button is clicked Once the window in view it can be placed anywhere depending also on the window manager used One recommended site is just over the tools panel with the standard buttons When clicking the central screen of MG the new window will desappear and the objects to be used can be drawn It is neede to select the objects to be geometrically attached and once
15. practice it is very simple to use this method The only point to remember is to include ONLY the object wanted in its totallity So some simple technique must be acquaired The sequence of operations proposed can be seen in those pictures Final drawing tra man2 html 1 of 6 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL au fay th METAGRAF screen tra_man2 html 2 of 6 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL Text to be modified tra_man2 html 3 of 6 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL au fay th Rectangle created by clicking and dragging the mouse tra man2 html 4 of 6 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL Line of text selected To use this method is very simple and really quick Nevertheless sometimes it seems almost impossible to select just one object as there is another one very close to it In those cases the best thing is to group the close object with some other far away Then the problem doesn t exist any more In short for selecting objects there is always a quite simple way if the capabilities and way of using MG are well known Anyway the actual situation will not be the final one as with implementation in full of the 3 D capabilities there will be true layers corresponding to distance along the Z axis Now it will be explained in short which other buttons do we have to manipulate obj
16. s see why Suppose that the last object created was a rectangle We have not deactivated the create object state and we have done a very short click with it before correcting the mistake But this very short click has been enough to create a problem The object has been created but with width and hight zero so we don t see it on the screen Nevertheless it is there and it has been translated to MetaPost when saving the file Then to view the drawing the file is processed but metapost does not tolerate such errors and does not finish compiling the file Hence no postscript output A good practice is to always return to the hand state of the cursor as soon as we have created anything Just click the right button Other programs use all three mouse buttons and you must know what to do every moment looking to your right at to try to break the code of the small drawing MG only asks you to click the right button every time you create an object That s all Just in case you make this mistake and you realize it the best thing to do is to try to select the point of the unwanted minimal object and delete it since it will be clearly seen if selected even though a minimal point If you remember exactly where you have clicked and you are working in snap to grid mode it can be possible although difficult to select it An easier way is to click and drag the mouse little hand with extended finger in a small rectangle around the zone where our short cli
17. 1s translated using the arrow keys and there is a mesh as background of the drawing panel the object can be put in an out of the grid state Then selecting one of its corners for examaple will be impossible So care is recommended The solution always is to change to the white paper background BEZIER CIRCLE This is the usual and recomended circle to use when no very small sizes are required It has also the advantage of little change in behaviour after transformation so for example the size can be increased or decreased with the mouse When we create it in the same way as always clicking and dragging the red circle appears with a point in the center just for reference an another one at the righr extreme This last one can be used lately to change the diameter of the circle clicking the mouse on it and dragging to the outside increase the diameter or to the inside diminish the diameter When transformed trough rotation around x or y axis the circle changes to an oval or ellipse but the point will remain and the size can be modified at any moment always in the same controlling way SPIRAL CIRCLE This object has been implemented specifically for creating spirals but it is also recommended when very small circles are needed and the aproximation of Bezier curves is not very good It is created the standard way At the time of creation we will see a red line where we dragg the mouse that correspond to the radius and a black circle
18. 22 html 5 30 2002 10 08 37 PM BEZIER RETURN ayu any2 html 5 30 2002 10 08 38 PM OVALO RETURN ayu_f12 html 5 30 2002 10 08 38 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL DESCRIPTION OF OPERATIONS INDEX POSSIBLE OPERATIONS In this section we ll present the operations related with objects once these have been created Some operations can t be applied to certain objects So some objects have more operations than others Even some operations are specific of a unique kind of object First we ll present the operations available for the user Afterwards we ll present an abstract of the operations available for each object But previous to that we must state a not so obvious thing an object usually needs to be selected before any operation can be performed on it To select an object after pressing the right button of the mouse that is in neuter state the mouse is clicked once over the created object That makes the color of the object to turn red Moreover in most cases if it 1s filled with color after selecting it it turns transparent Later on we ll explain in a greater extent the selection of objects which is important indeed The ongoing discussion is about selected objects COPY or CLONE Every object can be cloned as many times as you like just clicking a button This copy is made retaining all the atributes of the object in the moment of cloning and can be done in the same way with groups GROUPING AND UNGROUPING We
19. ALL the objects or group of objects SELECTED when the buttons are clicked This means a big economy in time and work Button with the title La TeX The effect of this button is to determine the way in which the final metapost file will be writen by METAGRAF The default mode is LaTeX that is what be seen in the small window under the button If we click the button this will change to TeX and the metapost file will be written as a standard metapost tex file In this case all the text math or standard included in the figure must be writen according with the TeX and not LaTeX rules GV PS button This button serves to choose the way of postprocessing the last file created after saving it when we want to see the drawing through Ghostview By default the very simple scripts included in the distribution at this moment works in Linux and Windows 9 2000 The default position of this button lets us see in the small window below gv tex If we see gv ps than the last file graf mp saved will be processed with just the instruction des inf2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 41 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL mpost and then viewed with gv This can be used with any drawing without LaTeX TeX text So any figure without text can be viewed in this way Not so if we include some simple text or math text or if we use the capability to write curved text In all those situations we must and read in the small window below gv tex to be able to launch gv
20. EATION Standard objects in METAGRAF are created acording with a sequence of steps that almost always begins clicking the corresponding button for the object and then clicking and dragging the mouse on the screen This is so for all geometric objects exception the Point object Now we will see some peculiarities that must be known in relation with every object RECTANGLE This object is a typical example As we dragg the pointer of the mouse IN ANY DIRECTION we can see the shape of the object as it is created When we click the right mouse button we can see that the red color that had the object as it was created changes to black A black color means that the object is there and that it 1s not selected We can also observe that the mouse cursor has changed from a little crosshair to a small hand one This is the cursor for the RESET situation so the first thing to do 1s to click the right mouse button As soon as we do that the cursor changes to its reset shape that lets us do any other activity The steps done for the rectangle are the usual ones for any other object in relation with the creation and the need to click the right mouse button so we will not come back to this point Once the object is created it is possible that it has the dimensions and is located at the exact position that we wanted Usually this is not so so a small precission work must be done To translate the object in any direction it is enough to select it to click on its
21. HELP METAGRAF USER S MANUAL FOR METAGRAF INDEX WORKING IN 2 D UNDERSTANDING METAGRAF Objects Description Possible Operations Description Controls Description Objets Buttons Description Sliders Description Editor s Use and Capabilities Description Screen Information Description WORKING WITH METAGRAF e Objects Creation e Transformming Objects e Manipulating Objects e Use of Files TEXT CREATION e Text Possibilities e Use of Text Controls e Text on Paths GENERAL AND LAST MINUTE ITEMS e Summing up e Geometrical attachments ayuda html 5 30 2002 10 08 34 PM OBJECT DESCRIPTION INDEX LISTING OF AVAILABLE OBJECTS Generally speaking we can assert that METAGRAF includes any necessary element for making any kind of drawing In some cases these elements named OBJECTS are repeated just for funtionality or user friendliness reasons for example OVAL and CIRCLE The latter can be drawn by four different ways Afterwards we ll explain the reasons of this overwealth Here comes the listing Point Line PolyLine Rectangle Oval Circle Arc Polygon Curve Spiral Arrows Postscript Text LaTeX Text Curved Text Pictures and Images And now yet at an alpha stage but usable there are a couple of new objects e Import of external Postscript drawings Mathematical functions written in a standard way All these objects can be transformed with the usual afine transformations O
22. PM radius and slope respect the start of the arc Marking another point this point and the origin of the first line are joined creating the second line that limits the arc This one can be modified or adjusted in the simplest way just by moving any of the three basic points as is done with LINE or any other object POLYGON The polygon is a classical element very useful and easy to create and modify Once it s been drawn the first side the rest is done automatically clicking with the mouse wherever we want to place a vortex The number of sides has been limited to 64 never reached in practice Metapost deals with it like a closed cycle of straight paths It s fully modifiable 2 D and 3 D as we ll see CUBIC CURVE This object is only found at METAGRAF Its management resembles polygon but when we click the mouse in the second point after creating the first line the cubic line appears it s a Bezier s Its control points are the middle points between extrems If a curve line that 15 not limited to one element is wished new points can be added as 15 done with polygons The curve 15 adjusting itself every two clicks so that it is tangent in the middle point of the sides of the circumscribing polygon Metapost handles it the same way Java does on the screen applying Bezier curves with the same control points marked with the mouse clicks ARROWS Arrows are extremely important in any technical drawing So all their capabilities have
23. PostScript fonts Clicking it a font dialog pops up for the usual choosing Afterwards these fonts can undergo afins transformations like the ones used with standard LaTeX TeX texts including math formulae 9 Button for raw MetaPost It s used with the editor METAGRAF is at the same time a graphic editor and a text editor At any time it is possible to mix a drawing with a text written in raw MetaPost Using the editor to write a MetaPost text and clicking the button labelled MP and then clicking anywhere in the working panel the text will be included in the resulting file This Metapost included in the drawing behaves as a special MG object It is not seen but it is there INDEX des_man2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 39 PM HELP METAGRAF OBJECTS BUTTONS INDEX AVAILABLE BUTTONS In the next lines we will look at the available buttons for creating objects and we will speak about the way of using them Nevertheless before we have to say a couple of words relation with two buttons that appear at the top part of the principal button box at left From left to right and from top to bottom we find what follows transformations we have to use it If it is clicked the Select Transform window will appear This button is in close relation with the principal Slider in such a way that before clicking on it and depending on the transformation choosen it 1s necessary to move the Slider to the place needed Once the but
24. RAF are not reset which 1s specially useful as we ll see afterwards 4 At the right the first of the three last buttons resembles a diskette this 1s the button for saving files Whenever you press this button a chooser apes where the name of the file to save WITHOUT EXTENSION must be written A couple of files with extension mp and bmg will be created in the directory choosen E 5 The next button is the cut amp paste button used for inserting pictures or images after having clicked the Place green button of the image panel See the file Introduction html Ma PT bes 6 Finally a small honour to Java language when we use his mascot to say goodbye This is the classic exit button We ve finished the review of buttons of general use There re more buttons these other buttons have some specific functions Really it s difficult to determine what is useful for all the people or just for part of the people OTHER BUTTONS NOT SO GENERALLY USEFUL 7 This button is in the top of the toolbox at the left it s used for running gv Linux or gsview32 Windows h for seeing the real result of the work At the same time a couple of new files with extension mp and bmg are created directory files as it is explained in Introduction html des man2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 39 PM HELP METAGRAF e 8 At the left of the previous button it s the button used for including special fonts that is
25. Smooth Bezier curves can have two kinds of continuyty in mathematical terms it can have continuity of the type Gl and this 15 the case when piece of the curve continues with the next one having the same tangent or continuity of the type and this correspond to the case when having the same tangent the distance from the second control point to the last point of the first piece 1s the same as the distance from the first control point to the first point of the second piece In METAGRAF it 1s assured that our Bezier curves have continuity If we continue clicking we will observe the same behaviour every odd click will modify the already existing curve making it shorter and every even click will finish the smooth curve to the point just clicked Usually the curve will be an open one but if our last point is the same as the first the curve will transform to a closed curve If not care 1s taken the closed shape will have a clear discontinuity in this last point The way to close the curve smoothly is to click the one before the last point 1n a virtual line that will be the prolongation of the first one drawn and at the same distance in the opossite direction as the first control point is from the begining Doing that when clicking the last point above the first one the curve will close in a totally smooth way A last improvement has been the capability to close the curve when this one has been already drawn as an open one The way of doing t
26. ad has been placed and place it over the beginning of the line As can be seen quite a lot of possibilities Once the kind of arrow choosen the line where we want it placed must be selected so 1n red Then it is enough to CLICK A SECOND TIME THE SAME BUTTON sometimes a third time 1s also needed that has launched the arrow panel and the line will have an arrow in one or both extremes it will be seen in the canvas just a small blue point at the point where the arrow is placed Some interesting points must be mentioned the placement of arrows will be done on all the objects selected when we click This is very convenient when we want to put arrows on many lines we do not need to place one arrow a time On the contrary we select all the lines which we want to have an arrow and place it at the same time on all those lines just clicking once Another important issue 1s that 1f we make a mistake and place the wrong arrow it is extremly simple to correct it The only thing to do is to click the radiobuttons needed on the arrow panel and place once more the arrows on the line s The first arrows will be deleted and the new ones will appear in due places Finally we can delete any arrow on any line to do it we must click the big upper left button on the arrow panel the one with the title Clear This is the same as selecting the arrow no arrow So placing it will erease any arrow over the line We must not forget to click once more the Clear
27. akes place on one side the h file is processed and the ghostview screen launched more precisely gv in Unix and gsview32 in Windows It will appear on the screen with the drawing done up to the moment Adotionally a couple of new files with the general name graf_num mp and graf num bmg are created in the directory files where num is a number beginning with 1 and increasing one unit every time the ghost button is clicked More about the distribution of directories 1n this release later on In this way just by viewing the drawing we save a copy of it However when exiting MG by clicking the bye bye button MA all the files saved with the name graf_num in directory files will be erased If we begin another MG session and open this directory it will be empty of those files So our drawing is safe temporarily To save it forever and ever we must click the save button s and choose a name and a directory to put it Sometimes it is convenient to give it a name and save it in the directory files This will not be erased upon exiting via the bye button if its name does not begin with graf We must mention that if MG 1s closed by clicking the closing button on the external window no files will be deleted Introduction html 2 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL It is a good practice to group the drawing before saving it Many times you will also find that once a part of a drawing is finished and saved you can de
28. always trough transformations with the sole exception of translations movements that can be done as always It can be convenient to say some words about the right line It is a very simple object but some properties must be mentioned It is created as usual Once done for selecting it it is convenient to know that it is enough to click in any part of the rectangle with sides parallel to the coordinate axis and which diagonal 15 our line This seems very simple but sometimes it can be a little bit tricky most of all with vertical and horizontal lines We know that another way of selecting an object is just by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer in such a way as to include our object in the red rectangle produced by this mouvement Another one would be to click in the one up one down arrow button that selects consecutively all the objects the same is obtained pressing the q key Also if little movement is required the best way to proceed is to select the line and move it with the key arrows on the keyboard Each click moves the object one pixel in the direction of the arrow If a finger is maintained over the key the mouvement is not too slow Finally we will say that by selecting one of the extrems of the line this one can be modified in length and position regarding rotation and that this object is an exception to the general rule in the sense that it does not chage its behaviour when transformed A point must be mentioned If an object
29. around it If the extrem of the radius 1s changed in position but not in lenght the circle will be the same but not the spiral created if we do it First of all it must be said that at present this object as a circle does NOT accept transformations The spiral created with it admits SOME transformations In what follows we will go into spirals SPIRAL Once created the circle support for the spiral in the way just explained to create the spiral there are a few very simple steps to do it First the big slider must be placed in some value that will be the number of spires that the final object will have To make it easier the scale 16 divided by ten so a value of 80 means 8 spires Once the slider is in place the button with the spiral over it must be clicked And that s all Our spiral has been created After clicking the right mouse button as ALWAYS MUST BE DONE AFTER THE CREATION OF AN OBJECT the original circle will change to a series of concentric circles usually the same in number as spires created This is just to remind us that this object 1s an spiral but the final draw is quite diferent obviously Now some precissions about the spiral created it begins always in the center of the circle and runs by default in clockwise fashion It finish in the last point where we have draw the original radius of the circle That is the reason why this radius can be changed in position without afecting the circle but changing the position of the spiral I
30. at is the same the pixels where is placed the pointer of the mouse according with the axis used by java center of coordinates in the top left part of the screen Label META that shows exactly the same as the window above it but now the coordinates correspond with the ones writen in the MetaPost files produced by METAGRAF This data are very important to add any writen part to the drawing or some kind of macro The way of doing is by placing the pointer over the reference point that we want to use and read the coordinates in the small window Label SCALE Under this label we find the real value taken into account by the application in relation with the positioning and buttons clicked of the principal slider We can see this value change if we move the slider but also if we click the or any other of the buttons at right of the slider Labels vSlide and hSlide Not present in the 800x600 version they show the situation of the smaller vertical and horizontal sliders Double button and This double button substitutes the two buttons in the left column in versions olders than this 1 1 0 Their function is related with the thickness of lines once an object is selected its thickness appear on the smal window under the buttons Clicking the or part of the double button the change in thickness can be seen in the window It is important to note that this actions in the same way as it can be done with the arrows are acomplish over
31. aving The six icons in the lower leftmost part are used for this sort of non specific controls So from top to down left to right we have 1 Open portfolio that represents as usual the opening of files Clicking this button we see the file chooser with the existing files on the files directory but that can be used to choose any other directory or file The file must end in bmg to retrieve a graphic from disk If the file is opened it will be pasted in the screen but If the CTRL key 1d pressed before when clicking this button and opening a file this one will replace everything on screen Some buttons in the file chooser haven t been bound to a function they re in the top right side 2 Below the open portfolio there s a button with the icon resembling two sheets This is the button to paste postscript files translated to mg files It is at an alfa stage but in the tests made everything has gone straightforward The translation of ps files to mg files can be done trough the use of the ps2mg program included in directory metagraf of the distribution Later on the way of doing will be explained 3 The last button at the left is the clear all button If we click it and then we click at any place of the working panel everything 1s deleted everything visible and also unvisible Once done the right button must be clicked to continue working Besides it s important to say that some internal counters of METAG
32. been exploited They have a special panel It appears when we press the specific button and we can choose between 5 arrow sizes each one with 5 different angles with the sides of the arrow and there are five different shape of arrows to choose from Moreover you can soften the point or leave it pointed and the the arrow can be filled or just drawn the contour Straight double or reverse no detail has been forgotten TEXT Finally we end this description with the most important of all It s the link with typesetting systems like TeX LaTeX PDFTexX It s possible to use raw PostScript and use the fonts available in the system METAGRAF has a nice and original management of texts You can change shape shearing placings in such a way that is unknown till today This issue will be dealt later IMAGES A new and totally original way to include any image in standard JPEG or GIF mode is now possible with METAGRAF And what is more the image can be manipulated in color brightness special effects etc This 1s a kind of small revolution for MetaPost unable up to now to use these possibilities MG is bringing new life to MP overcoming old frontiers of this one INDEX des obj2 html 3 of 3 5 30 2002 10 08 34 PM RETURN ayu_pun2 html 5 30 2002 10 08 35 PM ESPIRAL RETURN ayu_espiral2 html 5 30 2002 10 08 36 PM TEXTO RETURN ayu_text2 html 5 30 2002 10 08 36 PM Flecha2 RETURN ayu_fle
33. ber not to have any trouble One big advantage of METAGRAFSs arc is the unlimited capability of graphical edition Once created and clicked the right mouse button AS ALWAYS the arc can be modified in any way by moving any one of the three definition points Just playing with it will show his unlimited capabilities It is important also to mention that being the translation to MetaPost language a full circle limited by two lines it is also possible to create perfect circles with this object At the moment it has only limitations in the aspects related with transformations POINT And last and also least we have the point Just clicking once in the screen it is created The interest of this object 1s related strongly with the capability of increasing its size increasing the value of the pen used so with the couple button INDEX gen obj2 html 3 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 42 PM gen obj2 html 4 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 42 PM OBJECT TRANSFORMATION INDEX OBJECTS TRANSFORMATION We will begin with a detailed explanation of the affine transformations althought some lines have been written already in relation with this item In total there are 14 possible affine transformations that can be grouped four unities rotations scaling shearing and translations They will be explained in this order There are four possible rotations three around any of the coordinate axis and one more around an axis created by the user This last
34. boundary or the inner part and clicking and dragging the pointer mouse we will see that the original object moves at the same time and in the same direction Alternatively when one or more objects are selected they can be translated with the arroweys on the keyboard The selected object or its boundary must be always of red color This system of translating objects 15 the same for all objects or groups of objects at any moment If we want to change its dimensions we select it to have it of red color and small bullets on the corners Then is the moment to select with precission one of this corners Once this is acomplished clicking and dragging the mouse pointer we will see that the object changes its dimensions The rectangle object and exactly the same the oval one before any afine transformation change their size maintaining its axis parallel to the coordinates axis One aspect to be mentioned is the fact that when we create an object with any grid on the screen the coordinates of the object work in the socalled snap to grid mode Depending on the grid used this coordinates will be millimeters double millimeters and so on All the corners of the object will be placed in intersection points of the grid This is so at the time of the creation and if we translate the object with the mouse it will be translated from the original intersection point of the grid to another intersection point This can be very important if we want our final drawin
35. can group either objects or groups even we can group a single object a very interesting feature sometimes A group of objects acts like a single object that can undergo new transformations This opens many possibilities because a very same transformation applied to two equal objects doesn t produce always the same result For example if we have two circles side by side we select them and we apply the Perpendicular to screen that 1s Z axis Rotation transformation we ll see no change because rotation takes as center of rotation the center of the object the center of each circle But if we group them before the transformation if the rotation angle 16 90 the circles will change its position because the rotation center of the compound two circles grouped object 1s the center of the group LINE THICKNESS CHANGE The line thickness change operation is done by pressing the button increasing thickness or the button decreasing thickness Buttons are by side An small window let us know which is the actual value of the selected line There s no other options than increase and decrease The increasing decreasing is done by steps of 50 It can t be lower than 0 1 pt METAGRAF ignores further decreasings OBJECTS MOVEMENT Pressing over the objects and dragging It s as easy as that no further explainations Groups behave the same way Besides with afinne transformations specially in 3 D it s possible to move objects too Finally w
36. ck has been done The point will appear clearly if it 1s inside Finally if there is a mess of lines curves text and everything the best thing to do is to select and group everything and immediately ungroup with the standard button Doing that all the objects will be selected so in red and we will be able to see our point A button to understand Now let s say something about the structure of directories used by the present MG s distribution The entire MG program including the Java virtual machine can be downloaded and installed directly from the Web Once the installation 1s completed you will find a master directory with the name metagraf In this directory there will be one file and five directories that make up MG system Moreover there will be some other files directories created by the installer The core of MG is the file metagraf jar where all the Java classes are included The five directories that n mo come with MG are images src manual scripts and files In the scripts directory we have included all the scripts needed to use the facilities for visualizing writing launching the helping applications ghostview and so on These scripts can be edited if needed in order to to suit the user s environment better However before doing so it is necessary to understand how they work When the ghost button is clicked depending on the state of other buttons and or variables Java gives instructions to run some
37. ck the place text button T and click and drag on the screen A red line will be visible and as before the text will have its center on the first point clicked The length of the line drawn doesn t matter Just a point is enough but you will have difficulties in moving or selecting it afterwards After clicking the right mouse button your text will appear and if you continue to work you will see that the text field has been cleared You can write as many texts as you want and place them anywhere To edit any text already inserted in a drawing click a couple of times over the line of the text Then you will see this text appear once more on the text field where you can edit it Once done and before any other action the correct button Co rrect at right must be clicked You will see that the text on the screen has changed to the new one So to modify any written text on screen the steps are e click the text modify it on the text field e click the correct button Using the small text field window for this action has been chosen for reasons of simplicity as it is much easier to see the clean text than be required to work on the screen with grids lines of other objects etc Introduction html 3 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL The old editor has been maintained for two reasons First it is needed if we want to input some lines of written text on the drawing As it is known we can write direct metapost
38. code in the editor and then place it in the file just by clicking the metapost button pasteM P and then over the screen Second it allows one to modify a final file by hand some details text and so on and to save it in this modified state Mouse cursor We have decided to let nature as it is and did not change the standard cursors After designing the perfect cursor for every need we have realized that it changed not only with every O S but also with many window managers in Linux So back to the standard used by Java Let s say a couple of words about them In Windows the standard cursors are the cross hair not very small one and the vertical hand closed but one finger extended In Unix the same cross hair but smaller while the hand is horizontal and also smaller and with a finger extended Anyway when we see the cross hair cursor it means that if we click on the screen a new object will be created We must be careful about that Often times we just want to select an object to move or resize reshape it but we have forgotten to go from the create objects state Then just as we are about to click the mouse button we realize our mistake and click the right button of the mouse The little hand with extended finger is there and clicking once more we see our object selected red as we wanted The work continues we are happy with it and at some moment we want to see save it We click the ghost button and nothing happens Let
39. d select everything button and once more click the copy button Moving the group is easier than movin a single arrowline Now move the group it is easier to move a group than a single arrowline and after putting the second group in place we repeat the operation In the end we need only four operations instead of 15 Here 1s another example with the same arrows We will create the following figure One way of doing would be to go through the same steps as in the previous example and then rotate the figure and the lines etc That would be involved and probably not give the best results A better way is to rotate the first arrowline in this case 30 degrees and then make copies by groups as above and then rotate the whole group This will only take a couple of minutes and the quality of the final drawing will be outstanding as can be seen in the picture bellow This is a x8 zoom of the beginning of the other one Introduction html 5 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL Important details Now a few comments to bring to attention a couple of features that are important but not always clear for the user 1 When an object is selected and you want to select more objects the way to do it is to press the SHIFT key and click with the mouse on the others objects being selected 2 If you want to move an object very precisely the best thing to do is to select the object and to hit the arrow keys on the keyboard Each hit moves the
40. desappear but I must confess that I have been criticized in relation with this item So a clear explanation seems needed It must be said that there are three ways of selecting an object and one of them never fails The simplest way of selection as has been said is to click on the object If this is alone it will change to red immediately so no trouble BUT if the object 1s inside another one bigger and more recent its selection by the direct method is not possible In this last and only important case there are two option Once more the simplest is to click the double arrow button Each time this button is clicked a different object is selected Theoretically this would be enough for the goal but if the screen is plenty of different objects it is needed to click many times what can be cumbersome and boring And what is worse it is possible to click too quickly and overpass the right object Then the whole operation must be repeated A small improvement is to use the Q key instead of the button The effect 1s the same but it 1s easier and simpler A third possibility and the one used by myself almost always is to use the mouse dragging method As has been said before it is possible to select an object by clicking and dragging the mouse in reset state over it in such a way that the object is included in its totallity inside the red rectangle visible as long as the button of the mouse 15 not released With some short
41. done the MG Icon button can be clicked to make visible the new buttons window The button corresponding with the Operation wanted must be clicked and then a new click on central screen will show the new object and deselect the other selected ones This new tool of MG will be expanded in the future to permit a bigger simplicity in drawing and a more precise one I look forward to receive suggestions on which kind of attachments could be useful as almost everything can be done INDEX newthings html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM
42. e o k If we forget which state we are in there is a small window that indicates the current state tex or latex Specifically if we don t need LaTeX then we must see this label But if we need to process the file trough LaTeX this other label must been Finally another point to mention is that if you use the simple va script you will have your drawing in the same place as it is on MG s screen But if you want to process trough LaTeX the drawing will be displaced to the top left of the screen If you do not like that you can always place a couple of minimal points in the upper corners of MG s screen Cloning Copying cloning and moving objects and or groups is simple in MG For cloning there is the copy button Everytime you click over it exact copy with all the attributes of the objects groups selected is made The original remains selected so if you click a second time another copy is done and so on Let s see how you can use this capability Suposse that you want to draw an image like this one i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i One way of doing is to draw a right line and put an arrow at the end change the color to blue and click the copy button 15 times Then by placing the end of the extended finger of the cursor over the line and clicking and dragging the mouse we can posotion each copy as desired However it is a lot quicker to make a first copy of the arrowline move it to its place click the group an
43. e the whole width always visible but in the vertical dimension we have only a little bit more than one half working at 1024x768 INDEX des sli2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM METAGRAF 3 0D p xY O xz O zY y A A O O A A 20 a0 40 30 50 FO dit ti Lati E plo bel pide ec 1 z 3 al 5 F B eem GG o E 1 Lu n E RETURN shear12 html 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM METAGRAF 3 D e xy O XZ zv iun ee oe 10 20 a0 40 30 50 FQ SA A ee ee pao e eb l E 3 4 5 a AN A EE a RETURN shear22 html 5 30 2002 10 08 41 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL THE EDITOR INDEX WORKING WITH THE EDITOR MG s Editor has a couple of functions clearly determined One of those is the modification of the final metapost file obtained with MG by hand and saving it with the name choosen The other function of the editor correspond to the capability of introducing direct MP code in any draw what is useful not only to write complicated macros outside the scope of Metagraf but also to introduce a part of a picture already done in the past It is enough to copy and paste both instructions work o k and also Ctrl C and Ctrl V the file to the editor and then put it in the drawing with the use of the MP button The advantage of this way of doing 15 the fact that this part of the image does interact as a single quick object and so it
44. ects changing its default settings Clicking this button the small screen for selecting the kind of line to be used appears It is needed to have an object already selected as ususal and it is possible to choose a different kind of lines from plain ones to five other models acording to the size and separation of traits hal With this button a clone of the selected object will be created Extremely useful for repeated objects it is one of the buttons that I use almost continually It must be said that groups can also be cloned and this is something not possible in first distributions It is not recommended for cloning the all new geometrically attached objects a new feature in this first version of the 1 2 series Some of them will not be cloned tra man2 html 5 of 6 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL LU LA Those buttons serves for grouping and ungrouping the selected objects or groups Very useful they simplify a lot some activities inside MG Button for giving any color wanted to points lines contours etc It is possible to come back always to the original color black just by selecting it and chossing black Those buttons are for filling unfilling colors in closed objects Now its capabilities have been expanded so it is possible to fill with color non closed objects as polylines and bezier curves The color will fill the open object supossing that the last line correspond to the join of the
45. eed to practice a little bit as the reward is worthwhile INDEX tex cur2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 44 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL SUMMING UP INDEX GENERAL REVIEW Althought this file was written a few months ago I have not changed it as it serves as a resum off everything explained before Some small differences could exist but basically in the items mentioned it is up to date The present version 1 1 1 has many new useful features Some will show the impressive future possibilities of MG Here is a short list of the newest improvements e One of the least appreciated features of MG was the need to click the big button at left with the name SET RESET many times This is history Now you can hit the key ESC or better still you can click the right mouse button on the fly to obtain the same result The big left button is always there with a nice icon of MG but it has a new function as will be explained in Last minute items Is everybody happy now m E RENE n The old SET RESET Has changed o The way of saving viewing recovering drawings has been changed and will be explained in detail later on Now it 1s possible to save anything anywhere and to open anything from anywhere There are not many restrictions o To paste macro drawings there is no need to look for special files and click 3 or 4 times here and there Now just open a file with a simple click You can also pres
46. f after placing the slider in place we click the corresponding minus button of the slider so the value choosen appear in the small window SCALE as a negative number the spiral created will go from the center to the extrem of the radius in an anticlockwise way We will continue explaining other caratheristics of this object in the chapter gen obj2 html 2 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 42 PM related with transformations BEZIER CURVES Bezier curves are piecewise smooth curves We have already writen quite a lot about this object It is created in the same way as the poly line with the only difference that in this case when clicking the forth time a curve will appear from the first point to the last one in black color This is our Bezier curve If we want to finish here we can click the right mouse button AS ALWAYS and the curve is saved BUT if we continue and before touching the right mouse button we click a fifth time something happens On the one side the red polygon circumscribed to the curve will increase in one more side and the curve will move to the middle point of the one before the last segment of the polygon Then cliking a new time the curve will continue from the last point where it ended to this last point clicked and so on The reason for this peculiar behaviour is simple Here some maths What usually is searched with this kind of curves is to obtain a smooth one A good way to achieve this 1s with the method used by METAGRAF
47. f the page When the text is placed and the right button clicked the line of the text must be selected and the font chosen For doing that the choose postscript font button must be used and from the small panel shown the font selected and accepted Then maintaining the text selected line in red the text on the path button must be clicked Under the button there is a small window where we can read false until clicked Then it will change to true There is nothing more to do with the text Next we draw a line perhaps a curved bezier line or an oval or a circle Once the line 1s drawn and selected as usual we must click once _TxPar A small panel will appear trough which we choose almost everything related to our text If we put the cursor over the radio buttons a tooltip will explain the purpose of that button more the text on the path button and then the text parameters button Errai RE O ree 4 ee O E 7 zi 7 E j F e E A A E EE A LP s ou ie CURVED PARAMETERS 5 OYS OSL OPS OHL OSB OSG OCL OTH 1 Input the data 2 Click a button Radio buttons XS and YS control the x scale and y scale of the fonts Remember that in this case x scale means scale along the tangent to the curve in the point and y scale refers to the perpendicular to the curve Radio button SL from slanted means the shear in the glyphs PS represents the scale for the curve HL
48. first and last point of the polyline This capability is very interesting when doing compound objects for example a rectangular base done with a polyline and a curved top done with a bezier and everything filled with the same color The second button unfills any filled selected object With this button it is possible to eliminate any selected object by clicking it once the object has been selected INDEX tra_man2 html 6 of 6 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL USE OF FILES INDEX WORKING WITH FILES METAGRAF is an application to create MetaPost files 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 a
49. g with perfect joints Nevertheless it is very simple to change this behaviour as it changes accordind with the grid on the background If we prefer continous positioning the simplest thing is to choose the white paper as the background or the pixel grid When changing the grid the object will remain in the same place as it was althought now it can be in a place where its corners are not situated on the intersection points of the new grid Anyway the possibles mouvements will follow the new grid What we have explained lately 1s the simple way of working and will remain like that for all objects as long as we don t transform them From now on when the word transformation 1s writen 1t must be understood affine transformation When we transform an object its behaviour changes in some way Technically the transformation changes the original gen obj2 html 1 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 42 PM coordinates of the points that define the object from integers to double or float Apart from that in some cases the effect of the transformations is deeper as in the case of the rectangle and the oval For this two objects when we transform any one of them it is changed into a totally different object defined in a totally different way So once one of those objects is transformed if we select it we will not see anymore the points in the corners and we can not modify its shape with the mouse We can do everything with it but in a different way and
50. hat 1s to select and dragg the first final point to joint it with the last first point Then one of them will disappear and the curve will be closed The point where the curve has been closed can be moved in such a way as to make the curve smooth or a big angle can be created Angles can be created at any point of our Bezier curves just joining two nodes after the curve is drawn POLYGON The polygon is created in the same way as the curves just explained It has the peculiaruty of not having peculiarities so little explanation if any 1s needed It is enough to test it clicking a few times after the first segment is created and the behaviour of the object is immediatly understood Exactly the same can be said about the poly line ARC The arc of circle is an object quite simple to use A few concepts must be well understood The arc is created in the standard way first a segment and then one more click It is defined by three points the center point where we click for the first time the length of the radius that 1s the second point of our first segment and the third point clicked that represents the direction from the center point that limit the arc Sometimes it can be a little bit tricky to construct the arc that we are looking for For doing it in the right way one point must be remembered The arc begins always at the second point and goes in a counterclock way until the direction created with the third point This is very important to remem
51. ies submitted to any kind of direct or affine changes as well in 2 D as in 3 D As we know the big advantage of Bezier curves 1s that submitted to affine transformations the image has the same control points as those produced by the same transform over the initial ones Just to mention it we have to say that there is only a very small drawback in this object And this point faible is that it does not accept to be too small For those cases we have another object as will be seen 9 This other version of Circle has two special reasons to be included in MG The first one is to serve as the basis for the creation of the all new object spiral from which we will speak later on The second is to represent the simplest way of drawing circles according with MetaPost command full circle so with no limitations in small sizes and extremely simple to use as it is controlled like a right line The price is the big limitations in relation with transforms although a few are allowed to be used with the spiral 10 In close relation with the button at its side it has been included the one represented here for the creation of spirals This is a new object extremely versatile and simple to use A must for this kind of figure It is possible to dos spirals that go clockwise or anticlockwise with the number of spires desired It is also possible to select the final point in any position or angle The spirals can be included inside a circle or an ellipse with the ax
52. is parallels to coordinates axis or rotated any angle And finally this curve can serve also as the base of a written text in the same way as any other curve in METAGRAF 11 This button corresponds to the general Bezier curve open or close It has been explained before and we will say more afterward so we will not extend our comments as the users of METAGRAF know very well this nice approach to one of the strongest points of MetaPost Nevertheless it must be said that this object maintains all its capabilities in 2 D and 3 D transformations 12 The polygon is the typical object already known in other design applications and MG uses it in a standard way In this BETA version 1ts ease of use has been increased from 2 D to 3 D in such a way that the retouching of its shape through the corner points has been maintained any situation Everything related with this object can be applied to the Poly Line one 13 The simplest object is the point Although simple it is useful in certain situation as will be explained later on in relation of positioning of final images Also changing the pen thickness it is possible to draw nice totally filled small circles absolutely perfect as we have shown in a chapter before were looking for Simple and very intuitive with no limitations if the user tries it he will be convinced of its simplicity and incredible capability regarding edition of the figure placements of arrows and so on The interesting poi
53. is summup to a reasonable size we have to mention one other important new feature This is the one related with the inclusion of pictures or similar images in metapost files thereby increasing the versatility of MG Unfortunately this has been cataloged as a sophisticated feature so it is not as simple to use in Windows as in Unix Nevertheless although at an alpha stage we have had some success with a couple of Unix instructions used in Windows trough Cygwin And now it s time to begin with the detailed explanations of how to use MG and how to exploit its capabilities to the maximum Working with Metagraf 1 1 1 Introduction html 1 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL The importance of grouping It is very important to understand the preferred way of working with MG The capability to group objects has been improved in this latest version Working with groups is now a lot quicker and safer This means that if some optimization is wanted it is recommended to group objects as soon as they are finished Working with groups simplifies a lot some common tasks For example we can create composite objects that once finished will not be modified any more For those cases I have included the button ATTACH on the right Once a few objects are attached in a group they can not be ungrouped anymore So be cautious It is possible to draw new objects text etc over or under the attached group but this kind of group will be main
54. ith the rules if present it is possible to move horizontally or vertically all the objects in the canvas selected or not This is useful for example when we deal with a real big drawing then we can scroll and continue drawing It s like the scrolling function but without moving the screen only the drawings like a transparent paper SHAPE TRANSFORMATION AII selected objects that have marked points in the corners and borders can be modified at any time just clicking and dragging these points This is very useful in certain objects It s a must for adjusting curves TYPE LINE CHANGE Sometimes we may wish dotted lines or special lines Pressing the button a window will appear where we ll be able to choose among six different types of lines FILLING AND COLOR CHANGE Pressing the corresponding buttons the color dialog panel 1s dispayed This buttons can be the fill one a circle filled in red or the contour one a palette of colors Finally a third button empties the filling des ope2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 39 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL of a colour Such button is necessary because there s not a transparent colour Alpha channels are troublesome and not only in METAGRAP AFINE TRANSFORMATIONS There s a whole series of transformations of this kind All afine transformations allowed by MetaPost and some other that are interesting for 3 D work They sum up 14 available for the user and the functioning is almost the same alway
55. laced over the number 30 the transformation will be a shear in the X direction of a 30 of the value of the Y coordinate referred to the center of the object or group of objects at every point Now it is needed to clarify that unless in special situations all the affine transformations are done considering the geometrical center of the object or group of objects as the origin of coordinates which is the only reasonable way of doing it The Y Shear as can be thought is exactly the same idea changing their coordinates The Z Shear has no meaning in 2 D We can see the result of a X Shear of a value equal to 30 now Here is the object before shearing it and here is the des sli2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL object after the transformation We can see that in the upper part of the image negatives Y coordinates the X coordinate has been moved 30 of its Y Coors value to the left The same but opposite at the bottom part SHEAR is a fine transformation and very interesting for matters related with text CHANGE OF SCALE Without any doubt this is the most used transformation It is extremely versatile as it serves for many purposes It is of continuous use with special text but also when we want to make some use of a zoom function or when our drawing is small and difficult In this last case the best solution is to work at a bigger scale and when finished to reduce the image For all th
56. le to show the support line or to hide it So it is possible to give a curved name to a curved line in a drawing with nice effects Finally it must be said that it is possible to use different fonts in the same drawing straight or curved scaled or not etc Hereby this example of a draw done exclusively with fonts on aq UED y MN TAS VE AME re d 4M USING D 5 gt cw d MES a as a x T e gt s E E hs E E E E le S 8 A gt A jua z E La Ts to a v 74 T p an Ly A MUS IN G 4 y oF WRITING ON THE pATH But any way I like it 1 tex pos2 html 2 of 3 5 30 2002 10 08 44 PM INDEX tex_pos2 html 3 of 3 5 30 2002 10 08 44 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL TEXT CONTROLS INDEX CONTROLING TEXT For putting some text on a drawing the first thing to do 1s to write this text The place reserved by MG to write text 1s the small text field 1n the upper left of the screen Althought small it accepts any length of written text If longer than the small window the words will scroll to the left Once done to place the text in due place the button with the big T at left must be clicked and then clicking and dragging the mouse on the screen a red line will appear This is the support line for text When selected only a red line will be visible If unse
57. lected the text will appear The length of the line has no influence of any kind The critical point of the line is the origin as the text will be placed in the final drawing around this point in such a way as to make the point the center of the theoretical box containing this text So it will be center justified horizontally and vertically When selected the support line can be manipulated as a simple straight line It can be translated or rotated in the same way and the text will follow exactly this movement When not selected and if the line is not horizontal it can be seen sometimes a certain difference between the angle of the line and that of the text In the final drawing it will be positioned exactly acording to the line support position By default MG uses LaTeX as the standard language so care must be taken in creating the needed environment for using MetaPost with LaTeX If some user prefer to use TeX the button at right with the title La TeX must be pressed so as to read TeX in the small window below When writing math expressions these must be enclosed between dollar signs as usual Also the standar expressions can and must be used for example displaystyle if high glyphs or not reduced fractions are wanted If postscript fonts are used the process is the same with just one step more to be done Once the line drawn and selected the button with the three letters A B C must be clicked A window will appear where the t
58. lete leaving your screen less cluttered and then continue working All the points related with saving are in a close relationship with those related with recovering or opening To recover a part of a picture already saved and deleted from screen we have to click the open button and choose the file to paste Just by clicking open the drawing will be pasted on the screen the same place and exactly as it was when we saved it The old bug when recovering files with text written in TeX LaTeX has been fixed If you want to substitute a drawing for the current one that is not paste a drawing onto the drawing on the screen then press CTRL key before clicking the open button The drawing on the screen will disappear and the saved one will take its place In both cases saving and opening it is possible and simple to open any directory to save or open the file Writing and editing text A new way for writing and editing simple text in drawings has been developed The upper left part of MG s screen with the label with the name of the program has been replaced by a relatively small text field Although small the text scrolls at the end of the visible text field so text of any length can be written xY Yo 10 20 30 40 30 60 AU LAU HU EI MU Eee ee To place text in the drawing it is not necessary to launch the editor as before Just click on the text field to place the cursor and write anything Then cli
59. lors etc we must click the button with the green title Place see picture above Then immediatly the panel with the image will disappear Then you must clik the paste image button Doing so will change the cursor to the crosshair type In some cases you will need to click twice this button This depend the O S or the Window Manager the image panel will disappear and clicking at any place on the screen the picture will appear having as the left top corner the Introduction html 8 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL point clicked After clicking the mouse right button you can move the image in exactly the same way as any other object When the picture 15 selected a red rectangle will countour it We will discuss more on images later on Text over curves Text over curves has been a favorite topic of discussion in the metapost s newsgroups But with MG this is an easy matter if some important points are kept in mind Usually the written text is placed over a curve but the curve is not shown The way to procced is as follows Let s suposse that we want to place curved text in our drawing The first thing to do is to write the text that 1s the paragraph or title or whatever We do this in the usual way The only special point in this case is that the place where we put the text has no importance at all You can put it in the upper middle part as I do or as others would prefer put it at the bottom o
60. must be done with affine transformations Quite sophisticated our rectangle object 6 The oval or ellipse object is just the sister of the rectangle and has the same attributes The same change O from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde if we transform it and the same capabilities to satisfy all our pretensions 7 The right line is probably with the sole exception of the point the simplest object to manipulate Just by clicking on this button and then clicking and dragging over the screen a line is created Once done to modify it is as simple as has been its creation To translate it 1 is enough to click on any part of the rectangle limited by its extreme points and to change its orientation and or length is just a matter of selecting one of the extreme points with the special mouse cursor and move it in any direction This object accept any kind of transformation without changing its peculiarities Moreover it is the base of the written text as we have said before and the positioning of this last 15 based on the line The only characteristic that doesn t matter for the text is the length of the line des_bot2 html 2 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM HELP METAGRAF If the button is clicked after pressing the CTRL key the object choosen is the poly line It behaves like a polygone but is not necessarily closed 8 We have spoken already about the standard circle of METAGRAF It is an extremely versatile object that maintains all its initial propert
61. n t panic There 15 always a copy of the last metapost file in the scripts directory under the name graf mp and another of the same file after compilation trough mpost in the same directory with the name graf 1 ready to be included any latex file using includegraphics graf 1 for example Those files will be overwritten in next session with MG 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 tra fin2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM TEXT POSSIBILITIES INDEX USING TEXT The use of text on METAGRAF can be discussed acording with two big classifications On one side there is the usual standard straight text on the other there 1s one of the strongest points of MG the capability to write and include in any metapost drawing curved text in the simplest and easiest way The former will be explained in what follows and afterwards there will be a complete revue of cu
62. n the other hand the thickness type of line color and fill are modifiable Here are some examples e Spiral e Text des obj2 html 1 of 3 5 30 2002 10 08 34 PM e Big Arrow e Closed Cubic Curve The above images show some interesting particularities not very common That is in the text image we ve included a math formula which has suffered the following transformations 50 increase of vertical scale over the horizontal one To all the image a 30 slope has been applied so they resemble italics Now we will explain every object construction in detail POINT The object is just a pair of coordinates that define it the same definition as MetaPost Besides on the fly METAGRAF allows to choose the thickness and color trough the color dialog LINE Similarly the object line is drawn very easily It s done the same way as MetaPost with typical variables thickness color and type of line dotted thick dotted thin summing up seven different types to select POLYLINE This object is the same as the POLYGON but not necessarily closed RECTANGLE This is a special object But now we ll state that is a closed cycle made of four lines that link four points The possibilities of thickness color type of line are the same that LINE possibilities Nonetheless the METAGRAF rectangle is not necessarily 90 degrees from the start it may get to a not rectangle paralelogram Afterwards we will say more about OVAL
63. ng of ghostview screen where the up to the moment drawing can be seen The other 1s the saving of the metapost and java files corresponding to this drawing and this is saved in directory files The name of those files will always be graf_ number mp and the same with extension bmg The first correspond to the metapost file The second to the java file The number will be some number corresponding to the number of times that ghostview has been invoqued e The metapost file 15 just the transcription of the drawing to MP language and its graphical translation is what is shown in ghostview screen The java file is the metagraf file that can be recovered at any moment e There are two ways of recovering a drawing The first one is pasting the drawing with what is already in screen This is usefull for create a macro library that can be used at any time The second way of recovering an image 1s by substituting what is in the screen by the imported file This is used when some mistake has been done after the usually last saving e Recovering a file and pasting or substituting it with the actual drawing is done as follows 1 Click the open file button besides the diskette save one A file chooser will appear open in the directory files If our drawing to be pasted 15 inside this directory as it must clicking on its name and tra fin2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 43 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL then the OK button will put the drawing on
64. ns includes the general scaling the horizontal or vertical one and the scaling obj2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 42 PM acording with the perpendicular direction to the screen of no practical use in 2 D Those transformations are really straight forward and almost nothing must be said about them Nevertheless there is a very important point that must be mentioned and it 1s related with text All changes in text size are done trough scaling And this 15 true for tex fonts and or postscript fonts in all their possible aspects so including mathematical symbols and formulae A few test with some written text will show how it works and the results It will be explained in detail in due chapter The third group of affine transformations is related with shear Any transformable object including text can be shared in the X Y or Z directions the last one without practical interest Any other shear can be made superimposing a shear trough the first two axis The shear 1s produced in such a way that with positive amounts of shear in X direction will produce a rotation of a vertical line in counterclockwise way So it is usual if forgotten this point to have some surprise when looking trough ghostview the picture created And specially if some slanted text was tried It must not be forgotten to click the button of the slider when doing this Anyway to correct it 1s the easiest thing Finally the last group of affine tra
65. nsformations 15 the simplest one translations Usually of little use in 2 D they are very important if some object is wanted with some special position with respect to the Z axis In 2 D practically all translations are done by direct manipulation with the mouse or arrow keys Before ending this chapter some precissions are needed The first one is that it is NOT recommended to try any scaling of text before reading the specific chapters The scale is different as for other objects and inconsistent results will be obtained Another point is the need to mention that some objects dont accepts affine transformations Special mention must be made of the ARC object It accept some simple transformations as general scaling and rotation around the Z axis but not 3 D involved transformations The same can be said regarding the spiral object although significant transformations can be done only to be seen with ghostview or in final draw but not in screen It will be mentioned the possibility of scaling along X or Y axis and rotate around Z axis INDEX obj2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 42 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL MANIPULATING OBJECTS INDEX MANIPULATING OBJECTS The first point to mention in this chapter is the one related with the selection of objects Selecting objects in MG can be very simple or in some way tricky and it depends on the number and the type of objects on the screen Once used to the application all difficulties
66. nt is that the arc is always drawn from the second point to the third an anticlockwise direction Knowing that any arc be drawn quickly and easily and if arrows are wanted the direction 15 known 14 The object ARC has suffered a certain modification to simplify its use This new version is just what we des bot2 html 3 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM HELP METAGRAF We finish here this chapter in which all the MG standard object buttons has been explained and its relationship with the available functions clarified INDEX des_bot2 html 4 of 4 5 30 2002 10 08 40 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL THE SLIDERS INDEX USING THE SLIDERS In what follows it will be explained in detail the way of working with the Sliders and specially with the principal one This one is the biggest over the drawing panel with four small buttons at its right As has been said before this slider is connected with the transformation button the one with the thick short vertical arrow The way of using the slider is very similar for all the transformations with some exceptions to make the work easier and simpler So lets see how the slider must be used with every transformation and according with the order that appears in the transformation panel as it is launched ROTATIONS The first four transformations available are related with rotations For those the use of the slider is very simple as it 1s graduated by default in degrees from 0 to 180
67. object one pixel 3 Most of the buttons in the toolbox can be clicked with the mouse but also have a letter associated that can be used from the keyboard The key can be seen when putting the mouse over the button and looking at the tooltip that appears This is quite useful for example when there are many objects on the screen and we want to select one of them Instead of many mouse clicks on the change layer button it is easier to hit the Q key a few times 4 For putting arrow heads over any line usually it is necessary to click the arrow button TWICE The first time to launch the small arrow panel and the second for transferring the type selected to the line However if we have many lines selected and want to put arrowheads at the end of each we need only to select all the lines and click just once 5 Sometimes and depending on the O S the click over the button seems to do nothing If this happens you need to click once more The last buttons included in the toolbox are transparent So if the click works o k the button will have a darker color at the time of clicking Moreover some important buttons will beep when clicked This is the case for the arrow button for the save button for the copy button and some others Beautiful things Now few lines about pictures or images and some examples To begin with let s look at a couple of nice simple pictures done a few moments ago We have used our linuxed friend TUX
68. ose reasons it is the transformation chosen by default when the transform panel appears The Zoom button lately implemented just uses this capability to zooming objects Nevertheless something must be said related with zooming In its present state zooming is a strong point in METAGRAF and it must be used with care big problem is that the lines that support text will not be changed in position so zooming drawings with text can have not very nice results BEWARE The big Slider works in the same way as with SHEAR so in percentage If the slider button is placed over the number 100 and then the transformation is done nothing changes As the biggest number in the scale is 180 it is usual to make use of the buttons at right most of all in 3 d Those buttons works in a cumulative way So if an increase of four times 1s wanted after placing the ruler over the number 100 the button x2 must be clicked twice Over the small window SCALE can be seen the real value 1n this case 400 It is possible to use the change of the scale only in one direction for instead the X or Y the Z direction has no meaning in 2 D In that case the object or group of objects will be distorted in the direction choose my the corresponding percentage TRANSLATION This 1s not a very useful transform in normal use It is a lot simpler to move the objects directly selecting them and dragging the mouse The work of the slider 1s the simplest as the objects a
69. otation and if a circle is rotated it will be obtained an ellipse with its bigger axis equal to the one of the circle and forming an angle of 45 degrees with the horizontal The smaller axis perpendicular to the bigger will have a length of cos 60 1 2 times the bigger one So one half This behavior of rotations 1s exactly the same for rotations around the X and Y axis the only difference being their directions and the fact that those last are performed around the center of the objects or groups Not so in the former case if the special axis doesn t cut the center A rotation around the Y axis of 60 degrees will change a circle to a vertical ellipse with the same vertical axis as the circle and the same directions but one half in length of the horizontal axis But there will be no translation On the contrary a special vertical axis at the side of a circle will create the same ellipse but translated One final point about affine rotations must be mentioned they cannot be applied to text althought they could be so this 1s something to be stablish in the future For normal usual rotations of text the direct method is employed rotate by hand their support line Probably the most interesting or useful rotation is the one around the Z axis so in the plane of the canvas It is the typical rotation in 2 D and it must be remembered that the positive rotation in METAGRAF s axis is clockwise The second group of affine transformatio
70. permits to place the text more or less close to the curve in a vertical sense With the next it is possible to choose the separation from the beginning of the curve The seventh is quite important as it serves to set up the separation between the glyphs The other two buttons are only for the curve itself if nothing is done the curve will not appear in the final drawing If it is wanted to let it shown the last button must be used after writing the thickness of the line in the small text field The other button only serves to change the color of the curved line When al details have been finished it is IMPERATIVE to click once more the button TxPar Having done that the curved text 16 ready to be seen trough ghostview so the small ghost button can be clicked to launch it Althought it would be nothing to be done with the window launched by clicking it is imperative to click this button at least twice the first time to launch the window and the second to hide it Usually when the text shown in ghostview 15 looked in detail there must be done some adjustment of size and or position of the glyphs or the curve This is done in the simplest way The curve can be modified at will at any moment without the need to click any button and the same is true for the type of font of the text It can be changed as many times as wanted and launching ghostview the different aspects controlled To finish with this item I must emphasize the n
71. port line and the size shape or angle of this last have no influence of any kind on the final result It is suggested to put the text in some place visible but not disturbing so as to be able to read what has been written and that it has been done in the right way Otherwise it can be modified at any moment in the standard way using the correct button Once this first step finished it must be chosen the font to be used so usually the postscript window must be opened and the font selected In the actual situation the standard computer modern fonts have not been implemented for curved text although there is no special difficulty in doing it Contact me if it is wanted The usual scaling and or slanting of text using the big slider has no meaning in this situation Once the font chosen and with the support line selected red the button at right with the title Tx Pth must be clicked On the small window below the word False will change to True It is recommended to unselect the support line and click once more the same button to change the display to False once more Having finished the text preparation now the curve to be used must be created All curved objects can be used althought they must be understood first For example the bezier circle begin in the right extrem and goes in a clockwise way The oval begin at left and continue to the right also in clockwise sense It is much more convenient usually to use this last than
72. re manipulated saved named recovered etc This chapter is about all that As MGis 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 15 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 e The tree of directories created when installing METAGRAF is very simple A principal one where it 1s included the launcher called MG that has the name metagraf Inside metagraf there are some other directories For our present interest there are two of special interest One called files and another called scripts e When gv is invoqued the small ghost button is clicked two effects are produced One of those is the launchi
73. re moved by default the same amount in unities as it is written on the scale On another cases as working in 3 it can be useful when moving in directions perpendicular to the screen but we will speak about that later on One thing must be said about unities The METAGRAF unity 1s the pixel and working with a resolution of 1024x768 it means that one pixel is 0 25 mm We will finish this short chapter with a reference to the other smaller sliders vertical and horizontal not present in the 800x600 screen version Those also in 2 D have a limited utility being a kind of scrollbars To understand the way they must be used it can be imagined that when we are drawing a figure between the screen and the pointer of the mouse there 1s a thin transparent layer When we move the slider what we are moving is this transparent layer with the drawing over it This 1s useful when it is wanted to make a drawing bigger that the screen In those cases for instead 1f we want to draw a complete A4 sheet we need to move the first part of the drawing to be able to fill the total page It is important to know that although not visible to the eyes everything drawn in the positive part of the screen will be saved in its totality so we have to increase the size of our drawing to the bottom part and eventually to the right The unities written in the scales of the screen represents real cm s of paper A DIN A4 sheet has approximately 21x29 cm s so we hav
74. rved text To begin with it will be included a listing of the possibilities allowed by METAGRAF with normal text e Text can be used trough the standard tex fonts so from the computer modern family e Also the usual postscripts fonts included in most of the TeX distributions that 1s Times Palatino Helvetic Utopy AvantGarde ZapChancery Bookman NewCentury and Charter are allowed without restrictions e New fonts can be implemented in a simple way or at least with no greater difficulty as installing them for use with TeX LaTeX e All kind of mathematical text allowed by TeX is also allowed in MG e The use of postscript fonts don t create any difficulty 1f compared with the computer modern fonts They can be visualize trough ghostview in the same way and included in drawings to be used in a LaTeX file with no differences e Using any kind of fonts text can be scaled with no practical limits And this as a general scaling or a horizontal only or vertical only or mixed different horizontal vertical scale way e tis possible to create any type of slanted text with any of the mentioned fonts e tis possible to create special effects fonts as for example transforming an italic font in a vertical roman obtaining curious shapes e All the above capabilities can be used also with mathematical fonts e Any straight text can be rotated to any angle with a simple rotation of the its support line From
75. s Most objects can be used with them These are the available afine transformations that appears when the selecting button is pressed X ROTATION Y ROTATION Z ROTATION ANY PREDEFINED AXIS ROTATION X SHEAR Y SHERA Z SHEAR GENERAL SCALING X SCALING Y SCALING Z SCALING X TRANSLATION Y TRANSLATION Z TRANSLATION The origin 0 0 is at upmost leftmost corner of the canvas The X axis goes from left to right horizontally The Y axis goes from top canvas to the bottom Z axis goes from origin towards the wall behind the monitor CRT screen that 15 in the opposite direction of user It s a right turning dextrogirum axis The text processing operations will be dealt in its own section not here All transformations with the exception of the rotation around a special axis use the center of the object as its center that is that center behaves like the origin of coordinates It s like the origin would move into the center of the object and the transformation is done in the axis and then the axis return back to their corner in fact METAGRAF does that internally Only the PREVIOUSLY DEFINED AXIS ROTATION doesn t take such center as has been said INDEX des ope2 html 2 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 39 HELP METAGRAF CONTROLS DESCRIPTION INDEX LISTING OF AVAILABLE NON SPECIFIC USE CONTROLS In this section we will describe one by one the widespread use controls of MG such as close and opening of files S
76. s the CTRL key at the same time o To create and edit lines of text included in a drawing a new system has been developed that is much simpler and convenient It will be explained in greater detail below The old editor nonetheless has been maintained in order to write lines of program by hand or secret messages that will be included in the drawing but not seen in MG So no changes to the old editor of little use if any now o One small step for us but huge for man kind is the all new capability that we present from the very alpha beginning of inserting postscript files on the screen of MG They can then be graphically edited and saved as metapost files However you can not do this with text in the current version We hope to have this capability shortly Anything related with lines and shapes works quite well at least in the few tests we have done One important advantage of this facility 1s the possibility of recovering old metapost files as will be explained o smaller step for us and much smaller for the not windowed human kind is the inclusion in this version of the right scripts for Windows users for working in a normal way For the sophisticated users we hope to obtain some help o Scrollbars have been included as some people asked for it But the old standard MG s sliders have been maintained as they are very convenient for moving the drawing centering it or many other things o Finally and to maintain the size of th
77. script to create a couple of new files and put them in the directory files What matters now are the scripts in particular the pair va and go with or without bat extension Windows or Linux If we look at them we will see that basically they do one or two tasks In the case of va it simply runs metapost mpost on the file created at this very moment and launches ghostview gv to see the drawing created by metapost If we compare it with go we will see that go does the same as va but the file created is run trough LaTeX then through dvips The final postscript file is viewed with ghostview as before So in some cases LaTeX is used and in some others it is not The reason for all that is the fact that we can include text written or not One of the strongest points of MG 1s it s impressive capability of using text Introduction html 4 of 10 5 30 2002 10 08 46 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL SO many ways as will be seen We can write mathematical formulas or curved text or use standard postscript fonts we have included just a few we can scale this text in horizontal or vertical sense or make the text slanted etc But if our drawing has no text it is not necessary to run the final file trough Latex There 15 a special button to let Java know which choice to make This is the GV PS button This must be clicked if we want to use text Otherwise we will not be able to see our files although the mp files created will b
78. tained as it is forever and ever as it really is a new object Before beginning a drawing in MG one or two minutes of reflection can be quite useful The advantage of this is not to be underestimated One or two minutes can save one or two hours of modifying lines changing text and so on as is common with other well known programs The incredible simplicity for moving cloning or resizing objects and groups in MG makes it child s play to finish a part of a drawing in a few minutes Then group and view More about viewing later on Once the drawing is grouped and viewed it is safe and we can continue with the next step As we have given so much importance to groups in MG let s find out what the tools are for working with them First of all we have the two general buttons for grouping ungrouping that we know from past versions In addition there is the group and select everything button EA and the new ungroup everything button un Gr at right exception the attached groups e Finally there is this famous attaching button Attach at right Those buttons work in a straightforward way They do what they promise to do However there are some subtle differences that must be explained For the two general buttons to work the objects must be selected selected objects are red color To use the ungroup we first select a group Then clicking the ungroup button will ungroup the objects and leave
79. the former but 1 must not been forgotten that any object can be rotated to place the origin where it is desired The bezier curve is the most convenient as anything can be done It begin where the first click has been made and goes in a natural sense point by point Some precissions must be made It is absolutly necessary to prepare the text BEFORE creating the curve OR if the curve already exist on the screen when the text is placed after the preparation of the text the curve must be grouped alone and ungouped immediatly Doing that the curve will be the last object in the internal list of MG and this is needed to place the text over it Now it 1s time to select the curve and to click once more the Tx Pth button to be able to see the word True in the small screen The steps done up to now constitute the standard routine to create curved text Always the same to be used to it doesn t take more than a couple of days afterwards it is done almost mechanically tex_cur2 html 1 of 2 5 30 2002 10 08 44 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL To finish the process the button at right with the title TxPar must be clicked Immediatly a small window with some radio buttons will appear There are tooltips for all those buttons The first two serve to choose the horizontal and vertical scale for the glyphs The third permits slanting With the fourth the curve or path can be also scaled althought its usefulnes is not very clear The fifth radio button
80. the screen in exactly the same position as it was when saved To group the whole drawing before saving is a good habit Just clicking on the top red border button 2 If the file is in another directory the only difference is to go to this directory with the file chooser select the file and click OK 3 When the goal is tu substitue not to paste the only difference is that before clicking the open button the CTRL key must be pressed The rest 1s exactly the same e One point to remark 15 that when closing METAGRAF using the exit button all the files in the directory files and with the name graf will be erased So BEWARE Not so with files with other names as files is the right place to save the eventual macros In short if the session is closed with the exit button MG guess that the files created along the session are not needed anymore and delete them If for some reason it 1s preferred to maintain those files MG can be closed closing the principal window In that case everything will be maintained untouched in directory files but if another session begun the existing graf_1 graf_2 etc files will be overwritten when the ghost button is clicked Once the drawing is finished it must be saved with the name wanted the directory chosen For doing that the save button must be clicked and the file chooser will open in our home directory If for some reason this last step 16 forgotten and MG closed do
81. them in a selected state thus colored red The third one works just by clicking it All the objects on the screen singles or groups selected or not will be grouped and the group then selected The fourth doesn t care about selections of any kind It is the same It is the same to whether some groups are selected and not It will ungroup everything with the exception noted But it will ungroup all the objects and leave them in a NOT selected state Finally for attaching objects it is necessary to group them and immediately to click the attach button The group will be converted to a new object so be careful One last thing to be said about groups is that their use makes it easier to select objects In fact when a new group is created it is placed over the last object created on the screen as it 1s the last object One way to change the order of objects and to make one of them the last one 1s simply to select it to group itself alone and to ungroup it It will be placed over all the rest on the screen The user should experiment with this mechanism as it 1s useful with selection one of the points to improve in the TO DO list of MG A new way of saving viewing and recovering files This has been totally changed The new way is very simple and convenient When something is drawn on the screen and we want to see it the real way or to save it both things are done just by clicking the ghost button Ie When this button is clicked two things t
82. ton is clicked the Slider 15 locked E 1 The thick vertical arrow is the button for transforms If we want to manipulate an image through affine 2 The second button is just a making life easier button If clicked all the objects on the screen are grouped and then selected As this 1s something that usually is done many times with this button the whole operation is done quicker and simpler Suppose that we want to rotate an image There is no specific rotation button in MG but we can do as follows e Weclick this second button e Then move the Slider to the value choosen for the angle of rotation No limitations e Then click the thick Arrow button select the kind of rotation and accept click The whole drawing will be rotated Not TEXT BEWARE The next four buttons have been already explained or correspond to 3 D functions so lets continue with the one after those 3 The first one in this series 1s the Text button easily identifiable through the big T on its face Although text will be explained with big detail later on 1n another chapter we will say already a couple of words To put some text in a draw the process is as follows First something must be written in the upper Text Field Anything according with TeX LaTeX rules if some PostScript font 1s not choosen anything can be written including math_symbols Once finished the T button must be clicked and with the mouse pointer a line must be
83. xt chapters we will come back to the editor or the TextField but then it will be about its use as a pure base for texts INDEX des edi2 html 5 30 2002 10 08 41 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL SCREEN INFORMATION INDEX SCREEN INFORMATION METAGRAF has been thought to help with much important information on the screen to be viewed at any moment with no need to click any button or launch any auxiliary panel All this information 15 given continously in the column at right where some buttons are allocated as EDIT HELP and others In what follows we will make a detailed explanation of this column and the way everything in it works To begin with we will say that the buttons in this column and also the titles have two kind of color one being a kind of blue and another redish The blue ones correspond with actions buttons so the usual ones The redish are not really buttons but labels and there are no external actions to be done with them They are there to inform us Lets see the whole column to understand all its items At top we see the HELP button which 15 there to launch the Java visualizer and let us read this chapters Then it comes the EDIT button We know enough about this button from chapter before The third button is the Correct one that is used to modify the text written on the screen The fourth title 16 not a button but a label We see on it JAVA Under this label two small windows show all the time the coordinates or wh
84. ype of font can be chosen in the usual way All modifications in scaling shearing slanting and rotating will be done in the same way for any kind of font For the more precise control of text when scaling it the big slider used to choose the scale works in a different way as usually The difference is that the neutral point that s mean no scaling is obtained for a value of 100 If the size wanted is double the standard the slider must be placed over number 20 and then the small right button with x10 clicked so as to read 200 in the small SCALE window at right More graphical details will be given in the last general chapter INDEX tex ima2 html 5 30 2002 10 08 44 PM METAGRAF S MANUAL TEXT ALONG A PATH INDEX TEXT ON CURVED PATHS It has been explained already what kind of curved text can be created with MG and the different modifications that are allowed Now it 1s time to explain how to do all that in practice and using the tools provided To put some curved text on a drawing the first thing to do 1s the same as with normal straight text to write what is wanted on the text field provided for it Then the text button must be clicked and with the mouse cursor over the screen click and dragg Doing that as usually will let appear a red line So up to this moment everything is exactly de same as with normal text The first big difference begins now when writing curved text the place where the old sup

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