Request for arbitrary n-by-m printing setup.

Request for arbitrary n-by-m printing setup.

[Daniel Joyce]

	Okay, after sturggling to make business cards with a graphic in them, and 
finding that embedding a placefigure inside a frame inside a combination 
yields inconsistent and unfixable results (1), I finally got it working 
using combinations, frames, and figuretext. Figuretext is less flexible 
than placefigure, but fixes the problem mention in (1), IE, the weird 
tabbing down/over of other placefigures.

	1) Fix placefigure so it works inside combination, and other placefigures. 
externalgraphic does work inside combinations, buuut, you can't have 
laid-out out text inside a external graphic... Maybe I should try 
tex-graphics?

	2) Allow arbitrary n-by-m pagesetups for printing. Businesscards come out 
as punchouts 2 wide by 5 deep on a US letter page. If I could define a 
'business' card page and then lay them out for printing on such a page, I 
would have had to use the frame/combination kludge. As it is, I had to 
define a frame 3.5x2 inches, put my text & graphics in that, then put the 
frames inside a combination. Works, but it's messy.

	(1) By unfixable, the very first text/graphic would be layed out properly 
inside the combination, but all the others would be moved down or over a 
set amount. What's funny is the frames would stay put, but the 
text/graphics inside would be moved down/out of the frames! Frames don't 
seem to contain their contents very well. No amount of twiddling with 
combination, frames, or placefigure settings fixed this.  Frames also don't 
seem to 'wrap' their contents very well. I needed the frame because I 
needed it to make sure that each part of the 2*5 combination was exactly 
3.5x2inches so it'd match up with the perfs. 

	Some other things

	Showboxes is apparently bust wrt to the above too. Turning showboxes on 
with any combo of combinations/frames/figures results in the boxes being 
shown, but also clobbers the actual layout. Everything gets moved around. 
Defeats the purpose, no?

	Also, unlike the examples in the manual, when doing \hbox to 4.5{}
It shows the hbox straddling the entire textwidth, with a vertical line 
drawn at 4.5in in. The boxes look/work nothing like the examples shown when 
showboxes is turned on. Kinda like so.

	---------------------------------------
	|                   |                                 |
	---------------------------------------

	Also, \par inside a \vbox inside a \define causes NOTHING but problems. 
Same with \\. It complains about missing } or other nonsense.

	Daniel

Re: Request for arbitrary n-by-m printing setup.

[Hans Hagen]

At 05:36 PM 2/27/2002 -0600, Daniel Joyce wrote:
>         Okay, after sturggling to make business cards with a graphic in 
> them, and
>finding that embedding a placefigure inside a frame inside a combination
>yields inconsistent and unfixable results (1), I finally got it working
>using combinations, frames, and figuretext. Figuretext is less flexible
>than placefigure, but fixes the problem mention in (1), IE, the weird
>tabbing down/over of other placefigures.
>
>         1) Fix placefigure so it works inside combination, and other 
> placefigures.
>externalgraphic does work inside combinations, buuut, you can't have
>laid-out out text inside a external graphic... Maybe I should try
>tex-graphics?

\startbuffer
   some text
\stopbuffer

\externalgraphic[buffer][width=4cm]

should work

>         2) Allow arbitrary n-by-m pagesetups for printing. Businesscards 
> come out
>as punchouts 2 wide by 5 deep on a US letter page. If I could define a
>'business' card page and then lay them out for printing on such a page, I
>would have had to use the frame/combination kludge. As it is, I had to
>define a frame 3.5x2 inches, put my text & graphics in that, then put the
>frames inside a combination. Works, but it's messy.

\setuppapersize[A8][A4]
\setuplayout[nx=4,ny=4]

\starttext

\input tufte

\stoptext

>         (1) By unfixable, the very first text/graphic would be layed out 
> properly
>inside the combination, but all the others would be moved down or over a
>set amount. What's funny is the frames would stay put, but the
>text/graphics inside would be moved down/out of the frames! Frames don't
>seem to contain their contents very well. No amount of twiddling with
>combination, frames, or placefigure settings fixed this.  Frames also don't
>seem to 'wrap' their contents very well. I needed the frame because I
>needed it to make sure that each part of the 2*5 combination was exactly
>3.5x2inches so it'd match up with the perfs.

this is because placefigure floats! so, don't use \place... inside a box

         Showboxes is apparently bust wrt to the above too. Turning 
showboxes on
>with any combo of combinations/frames/figures results in the boxes being
>shown, but also clobbers the actual layout. Everything gets moved around.
>Defeats the purpose, no?

since the visual debugger overloads primitives, it will fail in situations 
where unboxing and alike takes place, no way out

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   fall-back web server: 
www.pragma-pod.nl
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Request for arbitrary n-by-m printing setup.

[Hans Hagen]

At 05:36 PM 2/27/2002 -0600, Daniel Joyce wrote:
>         Okay, after sturggling to make business cards with a graphic in 
> them, and
>finding that embedding a placefigure inside a frame inside a combination
>yields inconsistent and unfixable results (1), I finally got it working
>using combinations, frames, and figuretext. Figuretext is less flexible
>than placefigure, but fixes the problem mention in (1), IE, the weird
>tabbing down/over of other placefigures.
>
>         1) Fix placefigure so it works inside combination, and other 
> placefigures.
>externalgraphic does work inside combinations, buuut, you can't have
>laid-out out text inside a external graphic... Maybe I should try
>tex-graphics?

floats (and fixed floats are also floats) will float when needed, and make 
decisions based on the curren tpag estate, so it will alwaye be a problem 
to use them inside boxes

>         2) Allow arbitrary n-by-m pagesetups for printing. Businesscards 
> come out
>as punchouts 2 wide by 5 deep on a US letter page. If I could define a
>'business' card page and then lay them out for printing on such a page, I
>would have had to use the frame/combination kludge. As it is, I had to
>define a frame 3.5x2 inches, put my text & graphics in that, then put the
>frames inside a combination. Works, but it's messy.

this is there

\definepapersize[BC][width=3.5in,height=2in]
\setupapersize[BC][letter]
\setuplayout[nx=3,ny=6] % or so

will give you small pages (this is the way we do our business cards

>         (1) By unfixable, the very first text/graphic would be layed out 
> properly
>inside the combination, but all the others would be moved down or over a
>set amount. What's funny is the frames would stay put, but the
>text/graphics inside would be moved down/out of the frames! Frames don't
>seem to contain their contents very well. No amount of twiddling with
>combination, frames, or placefigure settings fixed this.  Frames also don't
>seem to 'wrap' their contents very well. I needed the frame because I
>needed it to make sure that each part of the 2*5 combination was exactly
>3.5x2inches so it'd match up with the perfs.

see (1)

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   fall-back web server: 
www.pragma-pod.nl
-------------------------------------------------------------------------