Questions/Comments

[Marco Kuhlmann <lists@picoli.com>]

    Hello!

I am currently preparing my first major document with ConTeXt,
and just have to admit my astonishment about the great work that
lies behind the system. I am so fanatic about it, that I dare to
state some questions and comments for improvement. Please do not
mind if these issues have been raised before; I have not been
subscribed to the mailing list for a long time.

- The \setuppagenumbering command should provide a "strut" option
  to correctly cater for oldstyle digits: If no strut is
  inserted, the digits "dance" from page to page.

- Protruding information should be provided for all the different
  quotation marks. (I understand that support for protrusion is
  in an early state of development.)

- Is there a way to define custom itemisations? I mean, can one
  define e.g. a enumeration inparaenum which transforms

  We distinguish the following classes of problems:
  \startinparaenum
  \item neglectable problems,
  \item easy problems,
  \item hard problems,
  \item interesting problems.
  \stopinparaenum

  into

  We distinguish the following classes of problems: (a) neglectable
  problems, (b) easy problems, (c) hard problems, (d) interesting
  problems.

- When typesetting capitals (like in acronyms), one would like to
  avoid "screaming" by decreasing the font size a little -- not
  much, just one point or so. Is there a way to switch to, say, a
  font with 90% the size of the current bodyfont? I could then
  write a macro \versal{} for my purposes.

- In German, there are a lot of abbreviations that end with a
  colon, like usw. (und so weiter) etc. What is the correct way
  to define a synonym \USW which inserts the trailing colon only
  if no second colon is immediately following? I fiddled with
  \doifnextcharelse, but were not successful.

- I suggest that the \digits mechanism should not trigger math
  mode automatically: In my document, I want to use oldstyle
  figures in text mode, while in math mode, upright figures shall
  appear. (PS. The \digitpowerseperator macro used in
  supp-num.tex should be named \digitpowerseparator, I guess.)

- Do you think that the \digits mechanism can be generalised to
  cater for phone numbers, bank account numbers, postal codes,
  etc.? The correct typography for these is language dependent,
  as well, so it seems to be plausible to merge the mechanisms.

Please pardon this extensive mail; I just got intoxicated with
the ConTeXt fever and try to shorten the time from me moving from
LaTeX to ConTeXt to a minimum, so more might come to my mind. :-)

    Best regards,
    Marco

-- 
Marco Kuhlmann                             marco.kuhlmann@gmx.net