A short introduction to METAPOST

METAPOST is a program strongly related to Knuth’s orginal METAFONT. It uses nearly the same graphics language and syntax, but instead of bitmap fonts it produces PostScript output. So it can be used to create high quality graphics. In METAPOST, points and paths may be described by a set of linear equations that are solved by the program. Thus, METAPOST becomes unique among other tools like PSTricks or commercial applications (e. g., Corel Draw). Additionally, the PostScript subset created by METAPOST can be interpreted by pdfTEX. So METAPOST figure can be directly included with e. g., the standard graphics package, while normal EPS images have to be converted first to be usable with pdfLATEX.