On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 12:48 AM, Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, 29 Nov 2014, Mark Szepieniec wrote:
>
>  So I guess my problem is resolved, but I'd still like to understand better
>> why my earlier solution of doing
>>
>> \setupfloat[figure][width=2cm]
>>
>> didn't set a default for later instances of \placefigure. I feel like I
>> might be missing some aspect of the ConTeXt philosophy, or I'm misreading
>> the manual, or it's just a bug...?
>>
>
> \setupfloat[figure] sets the values of \startplacefigure (and
> \placefigure), and not for \externalfigure. The width value for
> startplacefigure is not used anywhere.
>
> The default value of \setupfloats[width=...] is used when the float box is
> empty. So, the only scenario where the value of \setupfloats[width=...]
> will matter is the following:
>
> \starttext
> \setupfloats[width=2cm]
> \placefloat{}{}
>
> \setupfloats[width=10cm]
> \placefloat{}{}
> \stoptext
>
> Aditya
>
>
Thanks Aditya, that's very helpful and things make more sense now. Is this
stuff documented somewhere or did you consult the source code?