Henning Hraban Ramm schrieb am 06.04.2024 um 12:23:
> Am 06.04.24 um 11:43 schrieb madiazm.eoicc@gmail.com:
>> Hi everyone,
>> I'm a bit puzzled because I usually don't get an em-dash when I type 
>> tree hyphens. If I use the command \emdash, no problem but when I use 
>> the hyphens some days it works... and somedays I see three small 
>> hyphens.
>> I tried it on overleaf and of ContextOnWeb with the same 
>> inconsistency. If I create a new file it usually works right; but 
>> when I overwrite an existing file subtituting a hyphen for three 
>> where the dash should be I sometimes get it right and sometimes wrong.
>> It is not the pdf viewer since I get good or bad results in all, the 
>> overleaf pdf preview tool, the context on web preview tool and the 
>> mozilla integrated pdf viewer.
>>
>> Am I missing something on the use of this ligature? (the question is 
>> just out of curiosity, since I plan to create a command that adds a 
>> hairspace after or before the dash, since I don't like it to stick to 
>> some letters like "o".
>
> Generally, “we” try to reduce active characters as much as possible, 
> that’s why -- and --- usually /don’t/ produce en or em dashes. You can 
> activate these ligatures as a font feature though (AFAIR 
> "latexhyphens", can’t find it…).

The name of the option has changes a few times and the current setting 
is textcontrol=collapsehyphens.

> Some editors and some fonts do automatical replacements.

In this case it could be the wrong symbol in the document, there are 
many dashes in unicode which look similar in the input and output files.

\starttext

\startbuffer
\starttabulate[|T||||]
\NC U+0002D \NC - \NC -- \NC --- \NC\NR
\NC U+02011 \NC ‑ \NC ‑‑ \NC ‑‑‑ \NC\NR
\NC U+02012 \NC ‒ \NC ‒‒ \NC ‒‒‒ \NC\NR
\stoptabulate
\stopbuffer

\getbuffer

\setupbodyfont[pagella]

\getbuffer

\stoptext

Wolfgang