"A complex index" in _Digital Typography_

"A complex index" in _Digital Typography_

[Ed L. Cashin]

Hi.  In reading Knuth's _Digital Typography_ at lunch today, I came
across a section of the "Breaking Paragraphs into Lines" chapter that
relates directly to a difficulty in a project I'm doing.

In the section "A complex index", pp. 98ff., it describes a way to do
line breaking on an index entry such that the "name" part (on the
left) is ragged right and the "reference" part (on the right) is
ragged left, like this:

      |                                                       |
      | foo bar baz and even more........... 1100, 2000, 3300 |
      |                                                       |

      |                                      |
      | foo bar baz and even more ......     | 
      |                     1100, 2000, 3300 |
      |                                      |

      |                      |
      | foo bar baz and      |
      |    even more         |
      |     .... 1100, 2000, |
      |                 3300 |
      |                      |

I was planning on using perl to doctor the input text so that such
complex line-breaking decisions were unnecessary, but I'm wondering
now whether this might be something that people have already tackled. 

Is there support in ConTeXt for such complex line breaking strategies?
The criteria Knuth (and Plass) describe in the "A complex index"
section are pretty involved.

-- 
--Ed Cashin                     PGP public key:
  ecashin@coe.uga.edu           http://www.coe.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/

Re: "A complex index" in _Digital Typography_

[Hans Hagen]

At 03:17 PM 11/15/99 -0500, Ed L. Cashin wrote:
>Hi.  In reading Knuth's _Digital Typography_ at lunch today, I came

Then you're a pretty fast reader. 

>line breaking on an index entry such that the "name" part (on the
>left) is ragged right and the "reference" part (on the right) is
>ragged left, like this:
>
>      |                                                       |
>      | foo bar baz and even more........... 1100, 2000, 3300 |
>      |                                                       |
>
>      |                                      |
>      | foo bar baz and even more ......     | 
>      |                     1100, 2000, 3300 |
>      |                                      |
>
>      |                      |
>      | foo bar baz and      |
>      |    even more         |
>      |     .... 1100, 2000, |
>      |                 3300 |
>      |                      |
>
>I was planning on using perl to doctor the input text so that such
>complex line-breaking decisions were unnecessary, but I'm wondering
>now whether this might be something that people have already tackled. 

Since in ConTeXt the text and number are separate entities, I suppose
it is not that impossible to support this. However, I would prefer to build in some hooks first. 

I'll have a look at digital typo. 

Hans 

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Re: "A complex index" in _Digital Typography_

[Taco Hoekwater]

> Is there support in ConTeXt for such complex line breaking strategies?
> The criteria Knuth (and Plass) describe in the "A complex index"
> section are pretty involved.

iirc, there was a solution to this problem in the texbook. So the only 
problem left would be getting context to exec that code.

greetings, taco