Re: the closing bracket (structuring syntax)

[Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu>]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006, Steffen Wolfrum wrote:

> Hi,
>
> in XML and alike there is a concept of dedicated start/stop in
> formatting:
>
> <begin heading> ... <end heading >
> <begin footnote> ... <end footnote >
> <begin italic> ... <end italic>
>
> But in ConTeXt/TeX we have always the same closing syntax "}". That
> makes reading the code not easier.


You can always define your own startstop.

\definestartstop[italic][before={\bgroup \it},after={\egroup}]

and then do

\startitalic
  This is italic
\stopitalic

When a command takes an optional agrument, you can do use something like 
this

\def\startfootnote%
    {\unskip\dosingleempty\dostartfootnote}

\def\dostartfootnote[#1]#2\stopfootnote%
   {\footnote[#1]{#2}}


You can make such definitions of all your frequently used environments 
(or, if you prefer, write in XML and let ConTeXt handle XML).

> Is there a workaround to define the closing more precisely (like the
> examples above),
> so that finding a "}" in a ConTeXt source lets me distinguish what
> it's about?

There are \bgroup...\egroup which is same as {...} for all practical 
purposes.

Aditya