An alternative solution is to isolate the setting of the
autopunctuation btx option:

```
% Because some common punctuation characters are escaped in publ-ini.mkiv,
% we have to set this option separately
\pushcatcodetable
\setcatcodetable\ctxcatcodes
  \setupbtx[sbl][autopunctuation={!,.:;?}]% undelimited list of trailing
punctuation to move before footnote citations
\popcatcodetable
```

Joey

On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 9:40 AM Joey McCollum <jmccollum20140511@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks for these replies! Adding \unexpanded or \protected before \def
> didn't fix the problem, and surrounding the definition with \unprotect ...
> \protect didn't work either. But surrounding it with \pushcatcodetable
> \setcatcodetable\ctxcatcodes ... \popcatcodetable worked.
>
> I've never seen these commands before, but I gather from the existing
> documentation that the current catcode governs which characters are treated
> as special when a buffer is being processed. So here, it looks like I'm
> temporarily switching from some other catcode set (it looks like in
> publ-ini.mkiv, \catcode\commentasciicode\othercatcode gets invoked
> in \publ_set_publication, so perhaps that's what's happening?) to the
> default ConTeXt catcodes and then back.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> Joey
>
> On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 6:40 AM Wolfgang Schuster <
> wolfgang.schuster.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Joey McCollum via ntg-context schrieb am 10.10.2021 um 05:42:
>>
>> The test using \removepunctuation that you provided does what it should
>> be doing (it produces 6 instances of "test-test" with the intervening
>> punctuation mark in each case removed), but it doesn't do what I'm trying
>> to do in the MWE above. I'm trying to take certain punctuation marks that
>> follow the \autopuncttest macro and place them before it instead.
>> Looking at the typo-chr .lua and .mkiv files, I see that there are \pushpunctuation
>> and \poppunctuation methods in addition to the \removepunctuation
>> method. These might be useful for this purpose, but in any case, I still
>> have to check if the trailing character is one of the characters in a
>> specified set/string, and this is where the error is arising.
>>
>>
>> Add \protected (or \unexpanded) to your command definition.
>>
>> \startbtxrenderingdefinitions[myspec]
>> \protected\def\autopuncttest#1#2%
>>   {\removeunwantedspaces%
>>    \doifinstring{#2}{,.!?;:}{#2}%
>>    \footnote{#1}%
>>    \doifnotinstring{#2}{,.!?;:}{#2}}
>> \stopbtxrenderingdefinitions
>>
>> Wolfgang
>>
>>