Bruce, read this 3.6 Text You have already seen how the dotlabel command can be used to draw a dot and a label in the neighborhood of the dot. If you do not want the dot, simply use the label command: label.suffix(string expression, pair); It uses of the same suffices as the dotlabel command to position the label relative to the given pair. No suffix means that the label is printed at the specified location. The directives rt (right), urt (upper right), top (top), ulft (upper left), lft (left), llft (lower left), bot (bottom), lrt (lower right) can be used to specify the relative position of the label to the given pair. The distance from the pair to the label is set by the numeric variable labeloffset. The commands label and dotlabel both use a string expression for the label text and typeset it in the default font, which is likely to be "cmr10" and which can changed through the variables defaultfont and defaultscale. For example, defaultfont := "tir"; defaultscale := 12pt/fontsize(defaultfont); makes labels come out as Adobe Times-Roman at about 12 points. Until now the string expression in a text command has only been a string delimited by double quotes (optionally joined to another string via the concatenation operator &). But you can also bracket the text with btex and etex (do not put it in quotes this time) and pass it to TEX for typesetting. This allows you to use METAPOST in combination with TEX for building complex labels. Let us begin with a simple example: beginfig(1); z0 = (0,0); z1 = (sqrt(3)*cm,0); z2 = (sqrt(3)*cm,1cm); draw z0--z1--z2--cycle; label.bot(btex $\sqrt{3}$ etex, 1/2[z0,z1]); label.rt(btex 1 etex, 1/2[z1,z2]); label.top(btex 2 etex, 1/2[z0,z2]); endfig; end; Dave Clucas dave.clucas@icloud.com <mailto:daveclucas@icloud.com> Exploring the World - One cave at a time

On 30 May 2018, at 11:00, therion-request@speleo.sk wrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Defining a user symbol that contains a short text string (Bruce Mutton)

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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 22:14:55 +1200 From: "Bruce Mutton" <bruce@tomo.co.nz> To: "'List for Therion users'" <therion@speleo.sk> Subject: [Therion] Defining a user symbol that contains a short text string Message-ID: <000401d3f735$e5d86d90$b18948b0$@tomo.co.nz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Good evening

I'd like to make a user defined symbol that is simply an ascii text string. A quick and dirty adhoc symbol if you like. If I was going to be fancy, I would add a box around it like in the example of Dave Clucas that I have copied and modified below.

So rather than defining the shape of the omega symbol using metapost, I'd like to hard code an ascii character, say "E".

The yellow shaded text below needs to be replaced with some simple metapost, but I am too lazy to research and trial things.

I notice that other examples tend to use a copy of the p_label definition, and modify that. I would rather not head down that route, as then my custom code would overwrite potential future improvements to Therion's source code.

My plan is not really to create an alternative to the entrance symbol, but rather to create a template quick and dirty creation of single use or unusual symbols, that can be enumerated in the legend.

Does anyone happen to know how to modify the code below to do what I describe?

Thanks

Bruce

<https://therion.speleo.sk/wiki/_detail/metapost:entrancesymbol.png?id=metap ost>

code metapost

def p_u_ent (expr pos,theta,sc,al)=

U:=(.2u,.5u);

T:=identity aligned al rotated theta scaled sc shifted pos;

path p;

p = (-.3u,-.25u) -- (-.2u,-.25u){dir 135} .. (0u, .25u) .. {dir 225}(.2u,-.25u) -- (.3u,-.25u); % define omega shape

thdraw p withpen PenA; % draw it with fat pen

thdraw unitsquare scaled u shifted (-0.5u,-0.5u) rotated 45 withpen PenD; % diagonal box with thin pen

enddef;

initsymbol("p_u_ent")

def p_u_ent_legend = p_u_ent( <I forget where to find code for point drawing in the legend> ) enddef; endcode text en "point u:ent" "E for entrance" #text to appear in legend