METAPOST

One of my favorite tools for drawing graph is METAPOST, which is developed by John Hobby and based on Donald Knuth’s METAFONT.  The graphs generated by METAPOST is much better than the ones generated by Visio.   Moreover, it is easier to describe a graph with mathematical properties in a METAPOST program.  For example, it only took me around 15 minutes to reproduce Langford pairings in Knuth’s book. If Visio were used, it would take much longer time to make everything right.

The reproduction of Langford pairings is here.

Additional Links:

• MetaPost on the Web
• Learning METAPOST by Doing

Daily Readings

• Interview with Donald Knuth: “To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they’re trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore’s Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!”