Re: A Semetic Aporia

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 09:17 PM 11/17/2002 -0800, Idris S Hamid wrote:
>Dear Hans,
>I have a serious problem:
>
>In Classical Arabic numerals are pronounced from single digits to tens to
>hundreds, etc., e.g.
>
>1234== four, thirty, two hundred, and a thousand. This makes transcribing
>Arabic numerals easy: they run the same as in roman languages. So in my otp's
>(Omega-Gamma) there is a command to transcribe any left-to-right L-R string
>numeral into an L-R string in Arabic (so I don't have to type the numeral
>backwards in the L-R transcription; i.e., typing 1234 in L-R comes out the
>same in R-L).
>
>But there is a complicated scenario: For purposes of sectioning, we get 
>(as in
>a TOC) for e.g. Section 3.12
>
>in roman it should be (L-R):
>3.12-------------------------------------------<page no.>
>
>in Arabic it should be (R-L):
><page no.>-------------------------------------------12.3
>
>Now my Gamma configuration is such that everything is flipped R-L except for
>numerals, so I _actually_ get
><page no.>-------------------------------------------3.12
>
>in my Arabic sections and TOC. Is there any way to reverse the order of
>subsections so that subsection 3.12 comes out as 12.3? I assume there is some
>code that commands ConTeXt to print the section number, followed by the
>subsection number. Can that be hacked to reverse the sequence for Semetic
>documents (Arabic and Hebrew)? So we could have an option say,
>[style=semetic]. I did something similar in EDMAC once for Arabic critical
>editions.

\newif\ifreversesectionnumbers

\unprotected \def\@@longsectionnumber#1%
   {\ifreversesectionnumbers
      \@@shortsectionnumber{#1}%
      \ifnum\countervalue{\??se\previoussection{#1}}>\zerocount
        .\csname\previoussection{#1}\c!nummer\endcsname
      \fi
    \else
      \ifnum\countervalue{\??se\previoussection{#1}}>\zerocount
        \csname\previoussection{#1}\c!nummer\endcsname.%
      \fi
      \@@shortsectionnumber{#1}%
    \fi}

\reversesectionnumberstrue

\chapter{Well, let's see}
\section{If}
\section{This}
\section{Works}

but i assume you want a more sophisticated mechanism; should this be a key 
in \setuphead?

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf
                     documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf
-------------------------------------------------------------------------