Re: \halign

[Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny@eglug.org>]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 11:16:06AM -0500, Eythan Weg wrote:
> 
> Wolfgang Schuster <schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com>
> Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:20:01 +0100
> 
>    Am 24.02.2011 um 17:56 schrieb Eythan Weg:
>    
>    > 
>    > Hi,
>    > 
>    > I have just installed beta. 
>    > 
>    > The line:
>    > 
>    > \starttext
>    >   \halign{&\hfil#\hfil\quad\cr This& That\cr1&2\cr} 
>    > \stoptext
>    > 
>    > is not typeset and the & are left in place.  What could be the problem?
>    
>    Since a while ^, _ and & can be used in text mode like any other character.
>    
>    You can disable this with \donknuthmode at the begin of your document or
>    use the \aligntab where you would normally use & but the best thing is
>    to use one of contexts build in table environment.
>    
>    Wolfgang
> 
> Thank you.  I think that \halign, being a primitive of tex, should be
> respected.  If a user wants to use it, it should be usable
> unconditionally.  

I've no idea from where you came with this impression, is is usually the
other way around; people are advised not to use low level TeX code where
context has higher level interfaces, else you are on your own and should
be aware of the implications/side effects.

I, for one, grateful that I know longer need to escape regular
characters in my documents just to keep supporting some obscure TeX
feature.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Egyptian
 Arab
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