Sorry Dirk I see I answered the wrong question! It would be good to use tex variables in meta-post. Could then create a North arrow with both grid and magnetic north, for example. I would like to know the answer also. Bruce -----Original Message----- From: therion-bounces@speleo.sk [mailto:therion-bounces@speleo.sk] On Behalf Of Dirk Peinelt Sent: Monday, 6 June 2016 1:12 a.m. To: therion@speleo.sk Subject: Re: [Therion] Therion Digest, Vol 126, Issue 5 Hi Bruce, what i mean is to use the values of the Therion Tex-variables in a MetaPost symbol definition. To calculate some or to print it out. I don't no if there is a special syntax to get them. dirk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2016 13:05:12 +0200 From: "Dirk Peinelt" <dirk.peinelt@t-online.de> Subject: [Therion] MetaPost/Tex: variable \magdecl To: <therion@speleo.sk> Message-ID: <003b01d1be50$f7c6b130$e7541390$@t-online.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Is there a way to handle the content of the \magdecl TEX-variable in METAPOST? (Therion V5.3.16) In a string or numeric? - I think, i've an syntax problem. 1.) string handling: string dec; %dec:="3.022"; % FINE! dec:=\magdecl; % ERROR p_label.top(thTEX(dec),(0,0),0,8); % >> string output 2.) numeric handling: numeric dec; %dec:=3.022; % FINE! dec:=\magdecl; % ERROR p_label.top(thTEX(decimal dec),(0,0),0,8); % >> numeric to string output