Re: Questions about default page element postions when using letter paper size.

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 11:14 PM 1/20/2000 -0500, Thomas Porter wrote:

>My document was setup very simply:
>
>\setuppapersize[letter][letter]
>\showlayout
>
>\setuppagenumbering[state=stop]
>\setupheadertexts[Basic Linux Security][\pagenumber]

also accepted is:                       [pagenumber]

>\setupfootertexts[section][Piedmont Linux Users Group]

>If I changed my document to include a \setuplayout [width=middle] command,
the
>backspace stayed the same, but the \width enlarged wnough to cause the right
>margin edge to move off the page as well.

The main dimension to play with are 

backspace : also called binding edge 
topspace  : the distance between header and top op page 
width     : indeed the width 
height    : and the height 

So, start setting width to 'middle' and play a bit with backspace. 

The margins are virtual, in the sense that they don't count in locating the
main body text. Their dimensions play a role in (1) line breaks and
alignments and (2) backgrounds. Margin text btw can be positioned in such a
way that there are more virtual margins. Then, there are also edges (handy
for menus) and so. 

Did you read the english beta chapter on specifying the layout?   

>I am trying to figure out if my use of letter as opposed to A4, which Context
>defaults to, has caused some default dimensions to be set to A4 values as
>opposed to ones better suited to Letter paper size.

By default, the layout is defined in such a way that it scaled nicely with
the paper format. Since this happend to be A4 by default, you indeed need
to set the paper size to [letter][letter].  

>Just to be obsessive, here is the dump of the values produced for \showlayout
>for the fragment above:

>BTW, running context on the fragment shown above resilts in four pages of
>frames and settings, not just one!!  Also, having updated pdftex 

This is on purpose, since context supports single sided, double sided and
combined single/double sided output. There are some examples of this in the
big manual. 

I am getting:
>
>Warning: pdfetex (file /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/pdftex.map): invalid
entry
> for `hlcbot8rn': too big value of ExtendFont (850)

This probably means that the font is buggy. 

>messages, which do not seem to be breaking anything, but I was wondering if
>they might be causing some other problems.

No. Just ignore them. 

>Sorry for such a long post, but I wanted to supply enough info to be useful.
>
>I guess I am trying to avoid doing a lot of manual dimension setting in order
>to get my pages laid out in a useful default configuration.

What you can do is to put your default settings in the cont-sys.tex file.

Alternatively you can put them in a file, say 'mylayout.tex' and input that
file in cont-sys.tex saying \input mylayout.tex or \readfile{mylayout}{}{} 

Maybe the best is to add the paper setting to cont-sys.tex. 

Hans

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                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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