[NTG-context] Re: redefine space to be the same as \␣ similar to knuthian approach

[Carlos <linguafalsa@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 06:20:29PM +0200, Mikael Sundqvist wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It is extremely difficult to follow what you write.
> 
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 11:43 AM Carlos <linguafalsa@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If I have the following, with these linebreaks as in:
> >
> > {\par But a system cannot be successful if it is too strongly
> > influenced by a single person. {\obeylines Once the initial design is
> > complete and fairly robust, the real test begins as people
> > with many different viewpoints undertake their own
> > experiments.}}
> 
> Is that the complete document? What do you have in mind with obeying
> lines in the middle of a paragraph?

it's the only possible way off the top of my head to circumvent body
font size with a given width, while keeping both: the kern of \TeX\
and the double spacing that lmtx injects following a sentence,
within sanity check, hence the nonfrenchspacing

The separation of any of these four components would have hurt T
 E X sig­
nificantly.
 If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally
hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would
never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.
But a system cannot be successful if it is too strongly influenced
by a single person. Once the initial design is


> 
> >
> > and opted to load another font, other than cmr that is, a \frenchspacing
> > approach wouldn't be further required
> 
> cmr? Not used in ConTeXt for a long time. (And what does the changing
> of font have to do with this?)

latin modern.
> 
> >
> > Bear with me here, in the current state, for example, and as long as say
> >
> > «…person.␣{\obeylines Once the initial is
> > complete…» though feasible enough, leaves any prior \␣ at the mercy of
> > whatever fontsize and/or set width happens to be. And this is just plain
> > wrong.
> 
> What?
> 
> >
> > Likewise, if a word sequence such as \TeX\ occurs as in {\ss The separation
> > of any of these four components would have hurt \TeX\ significantly. }
> 
> Likewise what?
> 
> >
> > The next sentence: «If I had not participated…» does not get any
> > \nofrenchspacing which is equally and doubly problematic. It shows lack of
> > consistency. And this ought not to be an ‹either› ‹or› scenario. But
> > rather, an and conjunctional construct. It fails both ways.
> 
> Consistency of what? Spacing? Where? Can you make a complete example?
> (You can show space amount with \showmakup[space])

yes. and showmakeup displays: .SP:10.945 If

rather than for example with: .SP:5.235
 OnceSP:3.926
 theSP:3.926
 initial SP:3.926
 designSP:3.926
 is 

and 

:3.586
 THK:-1.853
 H__E
 X
 HK:-1.390
 SP:3.586
 sig­RH:0.000
 IR:0.000
 RS:0.000
LH:0.000
 H__nificantlyLS:0.000BS:6.565


and here's your example:

\setuplayout[width=16cm]
\showmakeup

\starttext

Thus, I came to the conclusion that the designer of a new
system must not only be the implementer and first
large||scale user; the designer should also write the first
user manual.
\setupbodyfont[12.895pt]

{\ss The separation of any of these four components would have
hurt \TeX\ significantly. If I had not participated fully in
all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements
would never have been made, because I would never have
thought of them or perceived why they were important.\par}

Do you see that width of 16cm? That's what throws it off

but then again, anything less than that 12.895 font size, throws off the
 kern of \TeX\ too. 

As a result, I can't use any lower font size, before everything,
including kerning of \TeX\ and spaces after sentences, are completely
off.

I mean. obeylines serve a better function than having extra spaces all
over with no end in sight, really. 
> 
> >
> > Furthermore, with the same token, if width is specified with a
> >
> > \setuplayout[width=15cm]
> 
> OK, here the game changes...
> 
> >
> > Anything less than 12.895pt, especifically for that use case, wwould
> > throw anything, particularly control sequences such as \TeX\ out
> > of whack, and conversely, once a value of that very pt or pica or
> > whatever is lowered, it brings that nonfrenchspacing right back on.
> > And if width increments occur, then it follows that any control sequence kerning
> > also gets thrown off as a result.
> 
> Of course the width influences the spacing. That is how the paragraph
> builder works (and really, why it often looks good).
> 
> >
> > It seems so far, that with lmtx, any standalone file, document, minimal
> > working example that does not load cmr at the outset does not produce
> > an acceptable outcome either. By saying acceptable I meant to say it
> > namely from a typographical point of view. Nothing else.
> 
> I have no clue of what you talk about here.
> 
> >
> > from the TeXbook 380-381
> >
> > «\obeylines doesn’t say ‘\def^^M{\par}’, so we must make any desired changes to
> > \par before invoking \obeylines. (2) The \uncatcodespecials operation changes a
> > space to category 12; but the \tt font has the character ‘␣’ in the ⟨space⟩ position, so we
> > don’t really want ␣12 . (3) The \obeyspaces macro in Appendix B merely changes the
> > ⟨space⟩ character to category 13; active character ␣13 has been defined to be the same
> > as \space, a macro that expands to ␣10 . This is usually what is desired; for example,
> > it means that spaces in constructions like ‘\hbox to 10 pt {...}’ won’t cause any
> > trouble. But in our application it has an undesirable effect, because it produces spaces
> > that are affected by the space factor. To defeat this feature, it’s necessary either to
> > say \frenchspacing or to redefine ␣13 to be the same as \␣. The latter alternative is
> > better, because the former will discard spaces at the beginning of each
> > line.»
> >
> > «In theory, this seems like it ought to work; but in practice, it fails in two ways. One
> > rather obvious failure—at least, it becomes obvious when the macro is tested—is that
> > all the empty lines of the file are omitted. The reason is that the \par command at the
> > end of an empty line doesn’t start up a new paragraph, because it occurs in vertical
> > mode. The other failure is not as obvious, because it occurs much less often: The \tt
> > fonts contain ligatures for Spanish punctuation, so the sequences ?‘ and !‘ will be
> > printed as ¿ and ¡ respectively. Both of these defects can be cured by inserting
> >
> > and
> >
> >
> > «When INITEX creates a brand new TEX, all characters have a space factor code
> > of 1000, except that the uppercase letters ‘A’ through ‘Z’ have code 999. (This
> > slight difference is what makes punctuation act differently after an uppercase letter; do
> > you see why?) Plain TEX redefines a few of these codes using the \sfcode primitive,
> > which is similar to \catcode (see Appendix B); for example, the instructions
> > \sfcode‘)=0
> >  \sfcode‘.=3000
> > make right parentheses “transparent” to the space factor, while tripling the stretcha-
> > bility after periods. The \frenchspacing operation resets \sfcode‘. to
> > 1000.»
> 
> Everything you cite above is very likely true for plain TeX, but maybe
> not for ConTeXt...
> 
> /Mikael
> 
> PS I do not think that your emails come out well. In order to get
> help, I would suggest a strategy that not so much only sounds as
> nagging and complaints. One thing that has been lacking is a clear
> explanation of what you really try to achieve.
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