\parbox, \framed, ... (was: Strange behaviour of \bTABLE ... \eTABLE)

[Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

Hans Hagen wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > %%%%%%
> >
> > \documentclass{article}
> > \begin{document}
> > a box with a table:
> > \fbox{\begin{tabular}[c]{l}1\\2\\3\end{tabular}}\par
> >
> > a midaligned parbox: \parbox[c]{1em}{1 2 3}
> > \end{document}
> >
> > %%%%%%
> >
> ^^^^ watch the \\ ! ! ! !

Actually, "\\" is a part of
    \fbox{\begin{tabular}[c]{l}1\\2\\3\end{tabular}}\par
while I was talking about typesetting
    a midaligned parbox: \parbox[c]{1em}{1 2 3}

So I have to say: no, there's no "\\" present in "\parbox[c]{1em}{1 2
3}". But please forget about different line-braking than in LaTeX
\parbox. It may be that different parameters for penalties are set
anyway. I mainly wrote this because of the problems in
live.contextgarden.net which is not fixed yet (see
http://contextgarden.net/Vertically_centred).

However, some other questions arised here:

1.) I saw \hbox, \vbox, \vtop, \lbox, \cbox, \rbox, \sbox, \tbox,
\bbox on page 106 of cont-eni.pdf. But if I understand it properly,
there's no alternative to LaTeX \parbox command.
1.1.) After grep-ing the LaTeX tree for "\parbox", my disk ran out of space
1.2.) \bTABLE ... \eTABLE seems too complicated to me to be used for
such a simple thing as asking for a paragraph of a certain width,
centered with regard to the current line.

So would it be possible to implement \parbox in ConTeXt (or if someone
can point me to an already existing command). The LaTeX definition is
in tex\latex\base\latex.ltx, line 4692 (at least in my version).

It does not have to have the same syntax, but at least the basic
functionality. I also often need some stuff to be centered vertically,
for example
    [big image] ----> some arrows and text ----> [big image]
I use \bTABLE ... \eTABLE or \vcenter for that, but it's not the most
perfect way of doing it.

2.) Is there any *neutral* version of a \framed command? To explain
what I want to achive, an example is probably most illustrative:

    \starttext
    Hasselt $\displaystyle{\rm is: \matrix{\rm nice\cr\rm sunny\cr\rm
domestic}}$,
    but the houses there \framed{$\displaystyle{\rm are: \matrix{\rm
too\ high\cr\rm too\ bricky}}$}
    \stoptext

Thank you,
    Mojca