[help-3dldf] Re: Your FEATPOST website

[L. Nobre G.]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004, Laurence Finston wrote:

> start_metapost;
> %% [...] Raw MetaPost code.
> end_metapost;
>
> If you want this, I'll do it.  It shouldn't take long.

I want this.

> Having the parser recognize invalid constructions by itself would not work.

Then we're left with the problem of passing variables back and forth.
You already explained why it is difficult to parse MP code, so it is
difficult to pass variables from MP to 3DLDF, but how difficult would it
be to just pass variables from 3DLDF to MP like:

start_metapost( MPpathX = 3DLDFpathY, MPpairZ = 3DLDFpairA, etc );
%% [...] Raw MetaPost code using MPpathX, MPpairZ, etc.
draw MPpathX--MPpairZ dashed evenly; %% for instance
end_metapost;

?

> > I would really like to have some merging before 3DLDF completely emulates
> > the behaviour of MetaPost but I'm willing to wait for a totally vectorial
> > 3D graphics machine, whatever its language.
>
> What sort of merging do you have in mind?

The sort of the question above.

> It would,
> however, be easy to write parser rules for having 3DLDF write MetaPost code
> that accesses your macros, if this was useful.

I don't think so. If my macros were reimplemented in 3DLDF, they would
work much better, because of the arithmetic engine. That's why I want to
use 3DLDF.

Lu\'{\i}s Nobre Gon\c{c}alves - http://matagalatlante.org