MPS2EPS

Having a problem with your MetaPost pictures? Symbols missing when pictures are included in your LaTeX document? Should you use "prologues := 1" or not? Well then MPS2EPS is a file converter for you!

Background

MetaPost is a powerful graphics language. MetaPost's accuracy and support for LaTeX interaction makes it an excellent choice for technical drawings. The drawings are normally generated as  PostScript. To be more specific, two different PostScript outputs are produced depending on whether the flag "prologues" is set positive or not:

  1. If unset, MetaPost generates a PS file which is not self-contained. This means that it cannot be previewed unless it is included in your document, i.e. run through your typesetter. I refer to this file format as MetaPost PostScript (MPS).
  2. If set, MetaPost generates a self-contained Encapsulated PostScript file (EPS). This file type can be previewed with a PostScript viewer such as GV or GhostView.

Intuitively, using the EPS file format ("prologues := 1") sound as a good choice. You can incrementally modify and compile your pictures without having to LaTeX your document for each modification. Instead you may open a viewer such as GV to inspect your picture. However, the EPS-files generated by MetaPost's "prologues" flag have one major drawback: fonts are note included in the EPS file. This results in two problems: (a) unless your PostScript viewer has been set up properly, it is not able to display e.g. Computer Modern fonts. (b) DVIPS does not include any of the fonts referenced in the EPS file, unless they are used in the document. Problem (a) can be solved by having the font path of the PS viewer point to the font definitions found in your LaTeX directory. Problem (b)  can be solved by giving DVIPS the argument "-j0", which makes it include the complete font table for a referenced font, and not only the actual font definitions for the glyphs used. This often results in unnecessary big PS files.

The shell script MPS2EPS, on the other hand, converts a given MPS to a self-contained EPS file with the necessary fonts included. The strategy is to include the MPS in an empty TeX document and use DVIPS to get an EPS file.

Download

Installation

Install the file "mps2eps" in a directory in your PATH.

Miscellaneous

MPS2EPS is released under GNU General Public License. Bugs and comments can be sent to Jon Edvardsson <joned@ida.liu.se>.

Last updated 2004-06-14