all about \about

all about \about

[John Culleton]

The \about cross reference command woks ok if I use
\about[aa]

It delivers the title (or part of it in this case) of the section 
marked aa.

but when I try to give it some text it blows up on the text, e.g.,
\about{foo}[aa]

So what if anything goes between the { and the }? What purpose do they 
serve? 

-- 
John Culleton
Resources for every author and publisher:
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/packagers.pdf
http://www.creativemindspress.com/newbiefaq.htm
http://www.gropenassoc.com/TopLevelPages/reference%20desk.htm
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Re: all about \about

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, John Culleton wrote:

> The \about cross reference command woks ok if I use
> \about[aa]
>
> It delivers the title (or part of it in this case) of the section
> marked aa.
>
> but when I try to give it some text it blows up on the text, e.g.,
> \about{foo}[aa]
>
> So what if anything goes between the { and the }? What purpose do they
> serve?

\about does not support \about{...}[...] kind of references like \in or 
\at. Does some documentation say that this is supported? This is what 
core-ref.tex says

\definecommand about {\dospecialabout}
...
\unexpanded\def\dospecialabout[#1]%
  {...}


This explains the error message that you get when you try \about{foo}[aa].

What do you want to achieve with \about{foo}[aa]? There may be some other 
way to do that.

Aditya
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: all about \about

[John Culleton]

On Tuesday 22 July 2008 04:12:48 pm Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, John Culleton wrote:
> > The \about cross reference command woks ok if I use
> > \about[aa]
> >
> > It delivers the title (or part of it in this case) of the section
> > marked aa.
> >
> > but when I try to give it some text it blows up on the text,
> > e.g., \about{foo}[aa]
> >
> > So what if anything goes between the { and the }? What purpose do
> > they serve?
>
> \about does not support \about{...}[...] kind of references like
> \in or \at. Does some documentation say that this is supported?
> This is what core-ref.tex says
>
> \definecommand about {\dospecialabout}
> ...
> \unexpanded\def\dospecialabout[#1]%
>   {...}
>
>
> This explains the error message that you get when you try
> \about{foo}[aa].
>
> What do you want to achieve with \about{foo}[aa]? There may be some
> other way to do that.

On page 167 of the Cont-en manual  \about is defined as:
 
\about{...}[ref]
. . . text

But you are right, if I want to change the text anyhow I can just 
ignore \about and put in the text I want. What I was trying to do was 
silly. 

Page 167 has been suitably defaced so I won't try that stupid trick 
again. 
-- 
John Culleton
Resources for every author and publisher:
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/packagers.pdf
http://www.creativemindspress.com/newbiefaq.htm
http://www.gropenassoc.com/TopLevelPages/reference%20desk.htm
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________