Thanks for the answers.  I did in fact know about \incrementnumber, but I
couldn't find any information about the counter.  Where would I find such
information, aside from asking on this mailgroup?

As for identifying each question and referring to it: that is an excellent
solution, but in fact I have only rarely to leave out an answer, and the
small amount of bookkeeping required is not at all onerous.

Thanks again,
Alasdair

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 3:27 AM, Thomas A. Schmitz <
thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de> wrote:

> On 2/14/12 1:48 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:
>
>> \starttext
>>> \startitemize[n]
>>> \item First question
>>> \phantom{\item }
>>> \item Third question
>>> \phantom{\item }
>>> \item Fifth question
>>> \item Sixth question
>>> \stopitemize
>>> \stoptext
>>>
>>
>> or something
>>
>> \starttext
>> \startitemize[n]
>> \item First question
>> \incrementnumber[itemgroup:**itemize]
>> \item Third question
>> \incrementnumber[itemgroup:**itemize]
>> \item Fifth question
>> \item Sixth question
>> \stopitemize
>> \stoptext
>>
>
> Just a hint: however you do it, I think this is not the best approach. you
> write:
>
>  I'm typing out solutions to questions in some student notes, and the
>>
> missing item is a question for which a written solution is not necessary.
>
>
> If this is a recurrent task, i.e. if you regularly make up student
> problems and then typeset the solutions, this approach is inefficient
> because you're doing the book keeping yourself. If, for example, you decide
> to delete one of the questions without written solution, you will have to
> delete the \incrementnumber as well. It may be better if you let ConTeXt do
> the book keeping: give every question a unique identitfier like so
>
> \startitem[p:1:2]
>  Problem?
> \stopitem
>
> and then typeset the solutions by referring back to this identifier:
>
> \sym{\in[p:1:2]}
>
> That way, the numbers in problems and solutions will always be correct,
> even if you rearrange etc. (I often typeset such exercise stylesheets, and
> after many years, that's my approach today.)
>
> Thomas
>
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