MetaPlot, MetaContour, and Other Collaborations with MetaPost

Most methods of creating plots in MetaPost work by doing all of their calculations in MetaPost, or by doing all of their calculations in a preprocessing program. There are advantages to dividing the work more equitably by doing the mathematical and data-visualization calculations in a preprocessing program and doing the graphical and layout calculations in MetaPost. The MetaPlot package provides a standard, flexible, interface for accomplishing such a collaboration between programs, and includes a general-purpose set of formatting macros that are applicable to a wide range of plot types. Examples are shown of linear plots with idiosyncratic annotation and two-dimensional contour plots with lines and filled contours on a non-cartesian mesh.