Re: horizontal alignment

[Wolfgang Schuster <schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com>]

Am 09.07.10 13:13, schrieb Michael Murphy:
> On 09/07/10 01:32, Michael Goerz wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm trying to do some horizontal alignment, for typesetting poetry.
>> How would you solve this kind of problem? I've considered defining a
>> macro \BrokenLine[line1][line2] that does the above. But, there are
>> also instances where there are two or more lines as a continuation of
>> one previous line. Maybe there is a possibility to mark a horizontal
>> position temporarily, and then jump to that position later?
>
> Didn't know you were into ConTeXt...
>
> Anyway, this is a crappy solution and you could probably make it better.
> As far as I'm aware, there is no way to get the current horizontal
> position across the page at any particular moment. The method below
> essentially just measures the length of the line that you want to enter,
> and sets this as the indent.
>
> \dimendef\indentl=10
>
> \def\savewidth#1{%
> \setbox0=\hbox{#1}%
> \copy0%
> \indentl=\wd0%
> }
>
> \def\addtosavewidth#1{%
> \setbox0=\hbox{#1}%
> \mindent\copy0%
> \advance\indentl by \wd0%
> }
>
> \def\mindent{\hskip\indentl}


Nice solution but you can improve it with a few context functions:

\newdimen\indentleft

\def\savewidth
   {\dowithnextbox
      {\indentleft\nextboxwd
       \copy\nextbox}
      \hbox}

\def\addtosavewidth
   {\dowithnextbox
      {\mindent\copy\nextbox
       \advance\indentleft\nextboxwd}
      \hbox}

\def\mindent{\hskip\indentleft}


A different solution is to store the end of the last line in one run and 
reuse this value in the next:

\def\SKIP
   {\doglobal\increment\SKIPcount
    \xypos{NP:\SKIPcount}%
    \par\hskip\dimexpr\MPx{NP:\SKIPcount}-\MPx{text:\realfolio}\relax}

\def\LASTSKIP
   {\par\hskip\dimexpr\MPx{NP:\SKIPcount}-\MPx{text:\realfolio}\relax}

\starttext
\startlines
here we now see you ~~  already in grief
as you see ~~  yourselves ~~  as the last of the lasts
we are mirrors of your consciousness \SKIP as you see the end
and you see us ~~ deep \SKIP in \SKIP the spring
\LASTSKIP of the universe
seeing you deep ~~ in the gravity well of the heat death
\stoplines
\stoptext

Wolfgang
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