[NTG-context] Re: defining macros

[Henning Hraban Ramm <texml@fiee.net>]

Am 11.01.25 um 00:19 schrieb Hans Hagen:
>> Yes, of course, but I’m often surprised by funny characters like #:
> 
> Well, there are reasons: It has to fit in the #1 .. #9 approach because
> these things are stored into tokens, so single character. Then one has 
> to decide on what characters. There's also a performance issue because 
> we don't want to sacrifice too much and these preamble tokens are 
> "parsed" every time a macro is called so they better can be efficient.
> 
> In the end only a few users (mostly developers) will see the obscure 
> ones (and understand why some are there). The \optional prefix enables 
> these extensions. It's a bit like: I want to grab arguments with mandate 
> {} and there is something so let's look it up. Or, I bet that one can 
> grab \par's so lets the manual for that.

Thank you for the explanation!
I guess you meant \tolerant instead of \optional?


> Did you know that we can have #A..#E as well. So 15 parameters instead 
> of 9? I still need to use that more (deep down).

That I knew. At least in mkvi/mklx mode.
If I use even 4 params I lose count of them.

> Don't worry, you don't want to know what I forget.

Sure.
I’m proud to have found several features that you forgot about ;)

>> I’m not competent enough to rewrite e.g.
>> https://wiki.contextgarden.net/System_Macros/Handling_Arguments
> 
>> Sigh.
> 
> So you haven't reached Wolfgang level yet, and by the time you have, he 
> bumped the scale up again, so don't sigh too much ... won't help, 
> actually your upcoming manual will cover plenty, so more of a hurray.

I’m always aiming for the stars. ;)
But my manual can’t be better than me, and I want it to be up to date 
and helpful – mostly for myself ;-P

Yes, I need to read the lowlevel manuals. But after taxes… (Also sigh.)

Hraban
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