[tex-live] New mplib-based mpost commandline

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi all,

Many of you will probably know already that I spent the last half
year converting metapost into an application library. I have not
only done that, but also converted the pascal web source code to
C web, and that means the commandline had to be re-implemented.

Now, the new mplib-based mpost commandline is not exactly the same
as the old version, and I welcome advice and thoughts on how to
proceed.

Here is an overview of the commandlines so far:


old (1.003)                  new (1.091)
-------------------------    -------------------------
-ini                         -ini
-interaction=STRING          -interaction=STRING
-jobname=STRING              -jobname=STRING
-kpathsea-debug=NUMBER       -kpathsea-debug=NUMBER
-mem=MEMNAME                 -mem=MEMNAME or &MEMNAME
-progname=STRING             -progname=STRING
-tex=TEXPROGRAM              -tex=TEXPROGRAM
-T, -troff                   -troff
-help                        -help
-version                     -version
-translate-file=TCXNAME
-8bit
[-no]-parse-first-line
[-no]-file-line-error
-halt-on-error
-output-directory=DIR
-recorder


The missing switches were done in the web2c change file, and often
that is the only reason why they are not implemented, but there
are some exceptions. Before the official release, we should decide
which of the missing commandline switches need implementing:

-T      I thought this was ugly, so I skipped it, but it would be
         easy to reinstate. Still, I find it ugly ...

-translate-file=TCXNAME
-8bit
         Mplib has always an implicit -8bit. Everything is passed on
         as-is, except that for the terminal and log, it will print
         characters in the control range (0--31) and DEL (127) in ^^
         notation. So I do not think we need those switches back.

[-no]-parse-first-line

         This is currently always on.

[-no]-file-line-error
-halt-on-error
-output-directory=DIR
-recorder

         I have no idea what to do about these.

The new mpost ignores unknown options, so none of the above will
generate errors, but that may not be a good thing.

I am sending this to texlive as well as mp-implementors.

Best wishes,
Taco