inimpost invocation

inimpost is the "initial" form of MetaPost, which does lengthy initializations avoided by the "virgin" (vir) form, so as to be capable of dumping `.mem' files (see section Memory dumps). For a detailed comparison of virgin and initial forms, see section Initial and virgin.

For a list of options and other information, see section mpost invocation.

The only memory dump file commonly used with MetaPost is the default, `plain.mem', also known as `mpost.mem' (again, see section Memory dumps). It is created by default during installation, but you can also do so by hand if necessary (e.g., if a MetaPost update is issued):

inimpost '\input plain dump'

(The quotes prevent interpretation of the backslashes from the shell.) Then install the resulting `plain.mem' in `$(memdir)' (`/usr/local/share/texmf/web2c' by default), and link `mpost.mem' to it.

MetaPost also provides a mem file with all the features of plain Metafont, called `mfplain.mem'. You can create that in the same way; just replace `plain' in the above command with `mfplain'. `mfplain.mem' file lets you directly process Metafont source files with MetaPost, producing character proofs (one file for each character) similar to those produced with Metafont in proof mode and GFtoDVI (see section GFtoDVI: Character proofs of fonts).

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