A font question.

["John R. Culleton" <john@wexfordpress.com>]

I use Context for highly formatted non-fiction, but I am a bit
reluctant to use it for much of my work because of the strange
(to me) font handling arrangements. I see no purpose for the
multiple synonyms of the same font. That just adds layers of
extra work.  And I am used to tweaking both the font size and the
baselineskip by fractional amounts to help in getting the
pagination just right and the spacing on the individual page
correct. For example I have the main body font on a current
project defined thus:

\font\rm=8r-AGaramond-Regular at 10.5pt
and this:
\baselineskip 12.0pt plus .25pt

If the page comes up a line short because of strict widow
prevention then the extra space is distributed imperceptibly
among the lines. \parskip is 0 pt for this novel. With a fixed
baselineskip the extra space is distributed only at paragraph breaks,
which gives an ugly result. 

This kind of fine tuning by users is perhaps foreign to Context as it now
exists. Font sizes are in fixed steps for one thing. 

However abandoning the typescript etc. process deprives one of
the useful feature of using tfa, tfb, tfx etc. to adjust font
sizes semi-automatically.

So here is my question. If I set up my own font definition
system and as part of it I have statements like:
\font\tfa bchr8r at 10.45pt
\font\tfb bchr8r at 11.37pt
...
... will the rest of Context accept the above tfb font and size in places
where a heading macro automatically defaults to tfb?


John Culleton