Extended description -- complete with sorts and selection

[Giuseppe Bilotta <bourbaki@bigfoot.com>]

Hello ConTeXt users!

I'm proud to announce the first "real" release of my xdesc
(extended descriptions) module, with selection and multisorting
capabilities. Please find attached the xdesc.zip file, containing:

* a patched texutil.pl; waiting for Hans to provide external
                        module support for texutil, I had to patch
                        support for xdesc right in the main file;
                        rename the texutil.pl you already have as
                        something like texutil.original and
                        replace it with this one.
                        The patch consists only in three routines
                        (look for "patch" in the file to find them)
                        and a couple of lines to trigger them. It
                        doesn't touch any other code. I will
                        discuss with Hans the details for the
                        plug-in interface of TeXUtil, so the next
                        version will probably come in a Perl
                        module rather than a patch ...

* t-xdesc.tex; the module; for those using the previous version
               (that is nobody :->): the interface has slightly
               changed --you don't use angle brackets (<>) to call
               slot values within a template, but the command
               \getslot. Also, the list placement commands have
               changed (see module and example file for further
               details). Put this in the "user" directory in the
               ConTeXt tree and refresh the filename database.

* desc-tst.tex; example test file. (Snippet from the document that
                originally called for the need of extended
                descriptions). Put it anywhere and test it.

Known bugs/limitations/todos:

* does not integrate with the ConTeXt multilingual interface
(yet).

* is not the most robust or fast or otherwise optimized code; I
will optimize/make it robust as the need arises *if* I know how to
fix/optimize it.

* object selection in list placement does not (yet) support
by"section" and such.

* I suspect it consumes string space very fast.

* no \start .. \stop pairs are defined (yet). Will probably come
with the multilingual interface.

* not thoroughly tested.

Other comments:

The next version of the epigraph module will very probably be
based on this xdesc module. (I wonder if it's worth writing it,
though: it's not too hard and much more customizable to just say

\defineextendeddescription[epigraph][epigraphs]
                          [author=,year=,source=,
                           whateverotherattributeyouwantforyourepigraphs=,]

and then use it as

\epigraph[author={Donald Arsenau},
          title={post on {\tt comp.text.tex}},
          note={May the 15th, 2001}]
{\quotation{Acrobat} is so named because of the contortions one
must do to get around its bugs.}

Any comments/suggestions/critics/enhancement requests are welcome.

For Hans: I'm pretty sure the code (especially the Perl code) is
independent (or "indipendentable") enough from the particular
structure of the xdescs, so an XML interface (maybe even an
interface to BibTeX databases) is feasible.

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta