new module: streams

["Thomas A. Schmitz" <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de>]

Dear all,

as you may have seen in the lates release notes, ConTeXt has a new  
feature: we have now streams for even and odd pages that can be  
synchronized at certain points. This is useful for, e.g., typesetting  
bilingual books: have the original on the even pages, the translation  
on the odd pages, and synchronize at certain points. I was very  
tenacious about it, and Hans has been characteristically generous  
with his skills and his time and has implemented something. I'm sure  
if some of you are interested, we will be able to refine it.

I am uploading a pdf-document displaying this new feature to our  
institute's website. Due to the system our university uses, it may  
take until tomorrow until it's really visible at http://www.uni- 
bonn.de/www/Philologie/Personal/Schmitz/Dateien.html It's a bilingual  
(Greek-German) edition of a number of Greek texts for my lecture  
course next semester. It's not perfect, but it shows how powerful  
this new feature is. Have a look at it; if anybody is interested in  
seeing the source code, just contact me, and I'll be happy to send it  
along. Just a very brief explanation, if you want to try this at home:

In the module, Hans has suggested a few shortcuts to using it, so I  
have in the preamble of the document:

\usemodule[streams]

\def\StartCouple{\page\SwitchToNormal}
\def\StopCouple {\SwitchToNormal \SynchronizeLeftAndRight  
\FlushLeftAndRight}
\def\Original   {\SwitchToNormal\SynchronizeLeftAndRight\SwitchToLeft}
\def\Translation{\SwitchToRight}

So you put the part of your document where synchronization should  
take place between \StartCouple and \StopCouple. After that ,  
\Original and \Translation switches between even and odd pages.

I know that several people on the list asked for a similar feature,  
and I'm very grateful to Hans for providing it.

Best

Thomas