Can anyone save my sanity -- help me to understand filtering?

[Graham Douglas]

Hi All

 

Firstly, I'm running Lout 3.24 on Windows 98.

Secondly, I apologise if a sense of frustration

comes through..., I *really* want to get to grips with

Lout because it looks to be such a great tool.

 

I'm trying to understand filtering of

right and body parameters but, unfortunately,

can't get the hang of it :-(. Sadly, my ageing

brain cells are just not cooperating...it is

very frustrating.

 

Firstly, can anyone please give me an

Idiot's Guide overview of filtering.

I can program in C so add

low-level details if that would help.

 

HOW does filtering work --

The Expert Guide, for me, just doesn't

give enough examples or explanation

on this topic.

 

--what are @FilterIn/@FilterOut

--HOW are these used

 

Everything I try keeps giving me errors

concerning Lout1/Lout2 etc where do these files

come from???  I just don't get it. Sigh.

 

What I'm interested to investigate is running

two programs called MetaPost (a graphics

programming language which outputs

PostScript/EPS) and a scripting Language

called Lua.

 

Suppose the command

 

"Lua foo.lua"

 

produces foo.eps

 

How can I get Lout to run the

"Lua foo.lua" command and

subsequently import "foo.eps"?

 

Also, is it possible to embed raw

Lua code into Lout and have this passed

(in a file) to the Lua interpreter?

 

Likewise for MetaPost code -- can

I write inline MetaPost code, run MetaPost

and then import the EPS?

 

I saw the @Sort example in the

documentation:

 

@Sort

@Options { -r -u }

{

Austen, Jane

Dickens, Charles

Eliot, George

Hardy, Thomas

address@hidden edieresis}, Charlotte

}

 

which seems to pass a set of names

to the sort function, so are these names

written to some sort of temporary file --

is that where Lout1/Lout2 come in?

 

I wondered if the same principle

could be used with inline

MetaPost/Lua code --

embed it inline, send to file, run it

and import the result???

 

Any help/advice on this would

be hugely appreciated.

 

Thanks to all for reading this

 

Best wishes

 

Graham Douglas

address@hidden

[freelance book editor]