Thanks. The immediate goal is to make a ”quad chart” w/ different pains in the four (2x2 => NW, NE, SW, SE) quadrants. It seemed that the concept was scalable to any NxM (even with multi-cell spreads---useful for larger structured posters) based on TABLE. But I'd settle for 2x2 at the moment; at one point I'd thought of 2x2+1 having a spanning block for publication references per slide but decided a separate publications slide was a better idea visualy..

If they have to see an end command, would before/after tags work around a framedtext or buffer structure?

1. 2x2 panes, layout order not important, all panes independent; no flow (like Framemaker used to do) requiredbetween panes.
2. was going to have inner frames (i.e. + frame for 2x2 which was trivial to specify in TABLE) to separate the panes
3. other than wanting the + frame, inner margins &c. for panes wsn't an issue either way.

Best,
---K

Kevin W. Rudd, Ph.D.
CAPT, USN (Ret)
Computer Architecture & Engineering (CAE)
Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) Research Program
Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS)
443-654-7878
kevin@lps.umd.edu
Visiting Research Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
United States Naval Academy
rudd@usna.edu
________________________________
From: Wolfgang Schuster <wolfgang.schuster.lists@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 4:31:38 PM
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Cc: Rudd, Kevin <kevin@lps.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: [NTG-context] problem embedding TABLE macros within wrapper macros "to reduce repetitive complexity")

Rudd, Kevin schrieb am 08.09.2020 um 19:50:
I have a number of slides using \...framedtext blocks to break the slides into panes within a TABLE environment (TMI: not in MWE; merely my justification for writing the wrapper macros). When the TABLE macros are invoked explicitly it all works fine and produces a suitable single-cell table with "quux blech baz bar foo" framed; when embedded in macros (whether defined by \def, \unexpanded\def, \define) then it fails with the error "The file ended when scanning an argument. => fatal error: return code: 256. A previous question on the topic seemed to indicate that TABLE was suitable, so I figure that something subtle is wrong as I've invoked the embedded TABLE macros. Any suggestions?

While most natural tables command can be embedded within other command the cells have to see the end command.

I guess this shouldn't be a problem for your case because something simpler can be used to create your desired layout but you have to provide more information:

1. Are there blocks side by side or do you stack them only vertically?

2. Do you need a frame around each block?

3. Are (small) gaps between the blocks allowed?

Wolfgang