ConTeXt oddities

ConTeXt oddities

[Frank Grieshaber]

Dear fellow-ConTeXters,

working with Context I noticed some small, strange behaviours:

1. I arranged pages in the following way:

\definepapersize[myCustomLayout][width=12cm, height=19cm]
\setuppapersize[myCustomLayout][A4,landscape]
\setuparranging[2SIDE]

now, when I use \showsetups I get the following values:

paperhight: 18.9973cm
paperwidth: 11.99829cm
(happens with the rest of layout-definitions as well)

well, sure enough nobody will see the difference in print... but 
nevertheless a bit annoying if you wanted to show the result of 
\showsetups to your clients (maybe the values are converted from cm to 
pt and back again?)

2. for control of orphans and widows I use the following:

\clubpenalty=8000
\widowpenalty=8000

it seems, this has to be inserted after \starttext, which is - I think - 
not a too good place for such a global definition,  shouldn't it be in 
the setup area before \starttext? but there I cant't get it working. Or 
am I doing something wrong with the commands?

3. if a command has lots of options it's better to sort of 
"pretty-print" those like the following:

\setuplayout[
backspace=15mm,
cutspace=10mm,
...
grid=yes,
marking=on,
]

After some time (lots of time..) I figured out that the last "," is a 
must, without it, the last option is ignored - why is that?

4. I am well aware this has been asked before on this list, but no good 
solution came up: I need the footnote ref number to be beneath the main 
text, not in the small blank space between the text and the margin 
column. I managed to get it working with the hack by Paul Tremblay 
posted on this list some time ago and defined my own \myFootnote-command 
for it, but that is a "quick and dirty" solution, there has to be a 
better way, so I'd like to raise the question once again: How can this 
be done? Is it that difficult to change this kind of strange setting of 
footnotes?

Many thanks for your answers,

Frank

Re: ConTeXt oddities

[Adam Lindsay]

Frank Grieshaber said this at Sun, 1 May 2005 17:57:30 +0200:

>3. if a command has lots of options it's better to sort of 
>"pretty-print" those like the following:
>
>\setuplayout[
>backspace=15mm,
>cutspace=10mm,
>...
>grid=yes,
>marking=on,
>]
>
>After some time (lots of time..) I figured out that the last "," is a 
>must, without it, the last option is ignored - why is that?

Hi Frank.

I think this complaint was one of the first ones I had on the list.
ConTeXt does a great job of gobbling up spaces after the commas
(actually, before keywords) in argument lists, but it doesn't do so well
with other spaces.

Your solution is good. Another would be to have the last line be:
   marking=on]

Hans said a few more words on it here:
<http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20050328.150952.ff9f4cae.html>
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