Thanks Aditya,

but out of the box the following

\usemodule[simplematrix]

\definesimplematrix[MATRIX][fence=bracket]

\starttext

\startformula
\MATRIX{1,2,3}
\MATRIX{1;2;3} 
\stopformula

\stoptext

gives me 

Matthias


On May 23, 2014, at 6:56 AM, Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:

> On Fri, 23 May 2014, Matthias Weber wrote:
> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> I would like to define a command that expands
>> 
>> \vector{2,4} % or vector[2,4] if that’s easier
>> 
>> to
>> 
>> \startpmatrix
>> \NC 2 \NR
>> \NC 4 \NR
>> \stoppmatrix
>> 
>> and more generally
>> 
>> \vector{2,4,1,7}
>> 
>> to
>> 
>> \startpmatrix
>> \NC 2 \NR
>> \NC 4 \NR
>> \NC 1 \NR
>> \NC 7 \NR
>> \stoppmatrix
>> 
>> Any hints how to achieve this?
> 
> Surprisingly, this is not as simple as it may seem at first glance. Some time ago, I had written a module to achieve this. See attached. The usage is:
> 
> \usemodule[simplematrix]
> 
> \definesimplematrix[MATRIX][fence=bracket]
> 
> (any predefined math-fence will work) and then:
> 
> \MATRIX{1,2,3} for row vectors and \MATRIX{1;2;3} for column vectors, and \MATRIX{1,2,3; 4,5,6} for matrices.
> 
> You can use \definesimplematrix[...][distance=..., align=...] to influence the distance and align keys of mathmatrix.
> 
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