Re: (pdfe)TeX register clash?

["F. Miller Maley" <maley@idaccr.org>]

Hans Hagen wrote:
> Context offers \newcount and \newbox (although the implementation is
> adapted to etex's >256 register count; i don't use the original etex macros).
>
> So, there must be something else going on. How does the macro that uses the 
> counter look? Maybe there is some unsafe testing going on there (lookahead 
> problem).

Thank you, this answers my question, and made me realize where my bug was.
Things are now working as expected, but perhaps there is a better solution
than the hack I came up with.  My real question is this:

Suppose I want to format something (a table, a section title) differently
depending on whether it appears on a left or right page.  I promise that
the two formats (left/right) will behave the same with regard to page
breaking.  What is the cleanest way to do this?

My idea was to (1) use the cross-reference mechanism to make a self-reference,
(2) extract the page number from the reference into a counter and (3) test it
with \ifodd.  Step (2) was a bit tricky, and my solution unfortunately relies
on ConTeXt internal macros (\doifreferencefoundelse, etc.).

-- Miller Maley