[NTG-context] 2006.07.13 release notes (MP-related)

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Tue, 18 Jul 2006, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

> On 7/18/06, Renaud AUBIN wrote:
>>
>>  Second, what's the difference between staticMPfigure and staticMPgraphic
>> and how (and where) can we use it ? Some advice are welcome in this part
>> because I use a lot of MPgraphic and I'm really interested to use
>> staticMPXXX if I can save some processing time... ;)
>
> Take a look if Aditya's remarks on
> http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Mpgraphic can answer some of your
> questions.
>
> staticMP... seems to create an intermediate PDF which is reused in the next run
>
> (I had some troubles making some of the functionality work which
> otherwise worked in someotherkindofMPgraphic: I don't remember what
> exactly it was, perhaps StartPage. I kept using the old command since
> I had no time to investigate, but it wasn't any serious problem.)

While debugging, it helps to know what is happening in the background.
Everything between
\startstaticMPfigure{name}...\stopstaticMPfigure

is written to \jobname-name.mp. A pdf file is generated using
texexec --mpgraphic which creates a temp file in the background with

\starttext
\setupoutput[pdftex]
\setupcolors[state=start]
\startTEXpage
   \convertMPtoPDF{<mpfilename>}{1}{1}
\stopTEXpage

\stoptext

This file is compiled using texexec and the output is renamed to 
\jobname-name.pdf

The second part (that is creating a pdf) happens only if the mp file 
did not change, which is checked by comparing the md5 sums. The md5 
comparison can fail rarely. If you want to force a new pdf to be 
created, rm the md5 file.

There is nothing inherently different in the processing of 
staticMPfigure. So anything that works with someotherMP should also 
work in staticMP.

Hope this helps,
Aditya