Re: Theorems, etc with ConTeXt

[Oliver Buerschaper <oliver.buerschaper@mpq.mpg.de>]

Hi Aditya, hi Taco,

I would really love to see built-in support for theorems in ConTeXt!

I have been typesetting my diploma thesis (in mathematical physics)  
with ConTeXt and my experience has been that in some areas ConTeXt  
still needs to catch up a bit on LaTeX (especially on the AMS  
packages), although it has definitely come along way already ...

So far I have constructed my theorems etc. as enumerations on an  
adhoc basis and - surprise - noted a few glitches here and there.

1. For some environments I chose style=\it but this resulted in  
italic equation numbers as well. However, these numbers should always  
be typeset upright.

2. There is some odd behaviour concerning the options "right" and  
"stopper" which I mentioned on the list a while ago. I believe this  
is more an issue of descriptions/enumerations  than anything else but  
it would affect any theorem mechanism based on enumerations. Perhaps  
this can be looked into at the same time as you're trying to cook up  
generic theorems.

Have you found out anything about the end of proof markers yet? I  
haven't tried it out but how do the AMS folks handle this issue?  
Unfortunately, I don't have the TeX programming experience (yet) to  
start digging myself ...

Oliver



>> Hi Aditya,
>>
>> Aditya Mahajan wrote:
>>>
>>> 4. The theorem should have a title. The title should be optional.
>>>> Is partially implemented
>>
>> I used to work around that by defining a layer on top of the
>> enumerations that always define the enumeration's settings
>> on the fly. Quite inefficient, but it worked OK. Support in the
>> core would be much nicer, though.
>
> I will try to add this to as a patch to enumerations, and see how it
> works.
>
>>> The last things, that is the end of proof marker, is right now not
>>> possible in ConTeXt. There are a lot of things that need to be taken
>>> care of while having a end-of-proof marker: basically, you need to
>>> ensure that there is no page break between the proof and the marker.
>>> Also the marker needs to be moved up or down, depending on how the
>>> proof ends. At the very least, ConTeXt should have something that
>>> ensures that the end of proof marker does not go onto a page of its
>>> own.
>>
>> End of proof markers are a pain, and I see no easy solution.
>
> I saw a proof.tex for plain tex, which ensured that the end of the
> line marker stayed on the same page. No support for correct
> spacing for itemize and formula. The ntheorem package does that, but I
> do not fully understand the algorithm, so it may be harder to port. I
> will try a port of proof.tex if I can find it again.
>
> Aditya