Re: Possible inconsistency in the use of paragraphs in ConTeXt

From: "Keith J. Schultz" <keithjschultz@web.de>
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Subject: Re: Possible inconsistency in the use of paragraphs in ConTeXt
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:40:04 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <FB90B17E-5BF3-44E3-BC5F-57614A0C0574@web.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <F4DEC60D-2D2E-4336-B5D7-FA94B6A809B6@gmail.com>

Hi Wolfgang,

Am 30.01.2013 um 21:56 schrieb Wolfgang Schuster <wolfgang.schuster@gmail.com>:

> 
> Am 30.01.2013 um 10:00 schrieb Keith J. Schultz <keithjschultz@web.de>:
> 
>> Hi Everybody,
>> 
[snip, snip]
>> Also, it took me awhile to find the setupwhitespace command, because for me whitespace can be
>> either horizontal or vertical. I think it would be better to rename it to setupparagraphspacing or something
>> like that. Or at least define a synonym for it. This would make things easier for the casual or beginning user. 
> 
> Which space do you mean in horizontal direction?
	O.K. Traditionally in typesetting and typography whitespace is just that white space.
	White space can also be inter-word spacing (horizontal).

	Since ConTeXt's setupwhitespace just maps to the parskip-demension I personally find
	the name confusing. 

	Possible for a synonym one maybe should use then setparagraphskip. This is just a suggestion.

> 
>> Maybe I am missing something. Ideas welcome.
> 
> The problem with the formatting of paragraphs is that TeX (the engine) has no big concept about paragraphs.
> 
> When you want to change the font or color for a paragraph you have to change the values of the document
> with \setupbodyfont[…] or \setupcolors[textcolor=…]. For local changes for a certain paragraph you can
> apply these values in a group (to change the color you can just use \startcolor[…] … \stopcolor).
	I am aware of this. Since,  I noticed the the paragraph(s) environment, I only assume that the functioned
	similar to the header environments. My mistake! 

	It would have been nice, if ConTeXt had such an environment. I do not know how ConTeXt processes
	things internally, but since it is a front end, ConTeXt could have the syntactic sugar of a "paragraph"-environment.
	That is that, while parsing the source it injects groups into the code it outputs for the paragraphs.
	This would give us then "paragraph"-layout. Naturally, this is not a TeX way, but could be a ConTeXt way. 
> 
> ConTeXt provides also a paragraph environment but this add only tags when you export the document
> as XML or create a tagged PDF.
> 
> The paragraphs (note the "s") environment has a Hans already mentioned nothing to do with paragraphs,
> it just puts the content on columns where each column can con tai multiple paragraphs. The name
> for the environment is misleading because columns is already taken as name.

regards
	Keith

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