There seems to be more to it: This works: \unprotect\halign{\hfil\it#\hfil&\hfil#\hfil&#&\hfil#\hfil\cr A&B&C&D\cr A&BB&CCCC&DDDDDDDD\cr}\protect But these generate a missing } after the \halign: \unprotect\framed{\halign{\hfil\it#\hfil&\hfil#\hfil&#&\hfil#\hfil\cr A&B&C&D\cr A&BB&CCCC&DDDDDDDD\cr}}\protect \framed{\unprotect\halign{\hfil\it#\hfil&\hfil#\hfil&#&\hfil#\hfil\cr A&B&C&D\cr A&BB&CCCC&DDDDDDDD\cr}\protect} Is such a construction (now) impossible? Hans van der Meer On 18 Apr 2013, at 3:03 PM, Wolfgang Schuster > wrote: Am 18.04.2013 um 14:55 schrieb "Meer, H. van der" >: There seems something very much amiss with \halign in later ConTeXt versions. This typesets fine in PlainTeX and is an example taken from a textbook. \tabskip=1em\halign{% \hfil\it#\hfil&\hfil#\hfil&#&\hfil#\crA&B&C&D\cr} Also in contextversion 2012.05.30 (from a TeXlive distribution). But it fails at least in ConTeXt ver: 2013.03.20 10:34 MKIV and in ConTeXt ver: 2013.04.16 12:08 MKIV beta with the following error ! Only one # is allowed per tab. system > tex > error on line 5 in file fixedwidth.tex: Only one # is allowed per tab ... 1 \starttext 2 contextversion=\contextversion\par 3 \tabskip=1em 4 \halign{% 5 >> \hfil\it#\hfil&\hfil#\hfil&#&\hfil#\cr 6 A&B&C&D\cr} 7 \stoptext l.5 \hfil\it#\hfil&\hfil# \hfil&#&\hfil#\cr Why? How primitive it may be, I would like to use \halign now and then. The error message is misleading because the problem is & and not #. One of the changes for MkIV was to make _, ^ and & normal characters in the document (the first two still works for math). For code writing this doesn’t matter because & has it’s normal meaning when you use \unprotect … \protect but it can’t be used in the document. Wolfgang