Hi Henri,
Thanks for your kind explanation.
Generally I understand your point and the ConTeXt philosophy.
> bmatrix, vmatrix, etc. are not defined by default, but
> as you saw from my last message it is trivial to define these,
> especially because templates (matrix:parentheses, etc.)
> for them already exist in the core.
If it is trivial to define bmatrix etc., then I think
it is not bad to provide them in ConTeXt itself but
it seems it violates the ConTeXt philosophy.
I feel it is too strict or too formalism, but this is
only my, very novice user's, naive impression.
Best regards,
Atsuhito Kohda
PS. I'm a Japanese and it takes a bit long time to write
an idea in English. Sorry for delay.
The existing definition of \pmatrix in math-pln.mkiv is the original
Plain TeX definition, because in the very early days ConTeXt used to be
compatible with Plain. This tradition has prevailed until today. You
will find other remnants of Plain TeX in ConTeXt, e.g. \eqalign, but it
is better not to use them.
Just like Plain TeX, ConTeXt does not provide \bmatrix and \vmatrix.
One reason is that they didn't exist in Plain, but another important
reason is that Hans is not a mathematician. If I remember correctly
ConTeXt was originally developed for typesetting of primary school
textbooks and last I checked matrix algebra was not part of the
curriculum.
Other developers (Alan, Aditya, and others) have contributed math
typesetting macros over time, but these follow the ConTeXt philosophy of
providing strong defaults but trying to avoid feature creep. Therefore
bmatrix, vmatrix, etc. are not defined by default, but as you saw from
my last message it is trivial to define these, especially because
templates (matrix:parentheses, etc.) for them already exist in the core.
It would sometimes be nice if you could just copy and paste LaTeX code
into a ConTeXt document and it just works™, but after all ConTeXt is not
LaTeX.
Cheers, Henri
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