Re: clutter with \start and \stop

["Rogers, Michael K" <mroge02@emory.edu>]

On Jul 4, 2012, at 1:29 PM, Peter Münster wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04 2012, Hans Hagen wrote:
>
>> no, mixing this way is asking for troubles, if not now, than maybe in the
>> future
>>
>> just use \section
>
> Yes, but isn't \startsection the recommended method for the future and
> needed for XML output?

XML documents should form a tree, so a structure like

\startA % <A>
\startB % <B>
\stopA % </A>
\stopB % </B>

won't translate to XML.

Grouping in TeX follows the same restrictions, and \start... and \stop... behave like \begingroup and \endgroup.  The \stop... is supposed to restore the state before the corresponding \start... (at least I assume so -- \endgroup works that way).  One cannot stop A in the middle of B and return to the state before \startA without also stopping B.  So one should put \stopB before \stopA, not after it.

Have you considered structuring your example like this?:

\starttext
\startsection[title=Tufte]
\startcolumns[n=2]
\input tufte
\stopcolumns
\stopsection
\startsection[title=Tufte and Knuth]
\startcolumns[n=2]
\switchtobodyfont[big] % Note that the font size is switched back after \stopcolumns
\input tufte
\stopcolumns
\input knuth
\startcolumns[n=2]
\input tufte
\stopcolumns
\stopsection
\stoptext

XML seems a nice way for machines to deal with data.  But it's not a very human way to speak.  I mean, if I write "\section{One}...\section{Two}" isn't it obvious that section One ends when section Two begins?  Why should I have to write \endsection, when the machine can do the bookkeeping for me?  The start/stop mechanism is nice as an option, if you plan to produce an XML document from ConTeXt.  However the XML translator could implement 'if not first section then "</section><section>" else "<section>"' and add "if in_a_section then "</section>"' when \stoptext is reached.

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