Re: framed texts for boxing stuff

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Maurice Diamantini (dom) wrote:

> Not sure what exactly is "vboxes" (something you can put in hbox? yes  
> it is) but LaTeX
> raisebox, parbox, minipage can be put inside a text line.
> minipage can manage its ones footnote, but this is not the question  
> here.
> As the "LaTeX++" concurrent package designer, you should read some  
> page of the
> LaTeX reference documentation "A document Preparation System"
> It is little book  (272 pages with the index !) and cover the core of  
> the
> package.

hm, i prefer to start from user demands and personal needs; we used 
latex for a very short time and i don't remember mini pages -)

>
> Page 103 to 110 are related to boxes, and is what is missing in context.
>
> I'm not sure that ConTeXt \framed command is able to reproduce
> the parbox behavior (position a framed box relatively to its internal  
> top
> or bottom line and the outside baseline)

i think we can safely assume that all these things are available somehow 
(supp-box.tex implements a lot of box types)

normally \framed can do what's needed, so in your case, if you can make 
clear what you want to achieve i'm sure that someone on this list can 
provide the answer

>
>
>> in most cases you can use framed (make sure that you set 'align' to  
>> something in order
>> to enter vmode)
>>
>> framedtext is a bit more clever and handles some spacing issues
>
>
> With your help, and some old reference doc and the wiki
> (http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Vertically_Centered_Boxes)
> I tested the following "one line text" which works.
>
> (My version of TeXExec 5.2.4 doesn't seem to support \startframed and
> \stopframed so I use \framed instead).
>
>
> \starttext
>
>   % align:    no left right middle normal high low lohi justified
>   % location: low depth hanging
>   a word and --%
>     \framed[width=.2\textwidth,  align=flushright, location=depth]{
>         some stuff
>     }%
>     --%
>     \framed[height=3em,width=11em, align={flushleft,lohi},  
> location=hanging]{
>         other stuff
>     }%
>     --%
>   another word, same line
>
> \stoptext
>
> But more generaly, there is a frequent need about boxing stuff and it
> seems that the \framed command is the way to go. But it's not always
> easy to guess the various parameters to get an expected behavior.
> So what is the current reference documentation about framed
>   - Context the manual (page 206) ?
>   - ConTeXt an excursion (page 45) ?

the manual as well as examples inside the core-ful.tex file

the most important properties of framed are

- offset (none,overlay, dimension)
- align (all kind of combinations)
- width/height (dimension or keyword)
- strut (yes|no)

just play a bit with it and you'll see the picture

>
> Such a command is usefull inside some "hardcoded" slide.
> And there could be a "\boxed" or "\cell" macro with default
> "frame=off" parameters just to serve as special tabular cell.
>
> I think there has to be two pairs of informations to position a
> box (i.e. a "cell" text):
> - how is the box is positioned relatively to its environment (the  
> location=
>   keyword I think),

no, location is limited to a few options; you can use macros like 
\offset[...]{} or other box positioning macros; layers are also an option

> - how to position the stuff **inside** the box (align= keyword)
>
> What is the need for these 2 parameters :
>
> - inside the box : everywhere. that implies two reals numbers
>   between 0.0 and 1.0 (perhaps wider?)

what are those numbers representing?

>   with some keyword for predefined values (flushleft, middle,  flushright
>   low, high, lohi and baseline,
>   (vjustified, justified=hjustified serve another feature)
>
> - outside the box : only verticaly ?
>   one real number [0.0..1.0] plus low depth (=base?) hanging (=top)
>   Here a parbox provide an option for aligning the external baseline
>   on the "top" ou "bottom" internal line.
>   How can I simply optain the "0.5 = vertical middle"
>
>   Probably the positionning parameters for outside the box are more
>   complicated : more than the internal reference point mention above is
>   to which external reference point the inetrenal point should be
>   aligned to ?
>   Generaly the baseline of the parent is the choosen one, but  perhaps 
> one
>   like to use the "0.5ex hight" one as in minus sign in the "3-2,"  
> string
>   (but the TeX command \raise0.5ex could do that)

indeed, \raise and \lower and cousins can come in handy 

(what do you use those mini mages for?)

Hans