On 2013–07–24 Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

> > Apparently \brokenpenalty is not supposed to be used with
> > \setpenalties, see spac-ver.mkiv :
> > 
> >    \setpenalties\widowpenalties\plustwo\maxdimen
> >    \setpenalties\clubpenalties \plustwo\maxdimen
> >                 \brokenpenalty         \maxdimen
> > 
> > Actually I don't yet know what's the deal with the \setpenalties
> > command and why it's used for some penalties and not for others.
> 
> You have to differ between the \…penalty command which come
> from Knuths TeX and \…penalties which are introduced with etex.
> 
> While Knuths command accept only a single value (e.g. \widowpenlty=1000)
> the new commands accepts multiple values which are taken for individual
> lines of a paragraph (e.g. \widowpenalties 3 3000 4500 9000).

I learned something new today.

> The \setpenalties command simplifies the setups of the new commands.

Combined with the aforementioned new knowledge, this totally makes
sense.

> The reason why \widowpenalties doesn’t work with \setpenalties is that
> no command with this names exist (I never checked this for my example
> in the past).

I couldn't find the definition neither in the TeXbook, nor the
ConTeXt sources. That's why. Thanks for the explanation.

Marco