The ConTeXt book

* The ConTeXt book
@ 2010-04-03 13:51 Michael Saunders
  2010-04-03 14:29 ` Peter Münster
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 8+ messages in thread
From: Michael Saunders @ 2010-04-03 13:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: ntg-context

Wolfgang:

Thanks---I'll go over what I can of those this weekend and get back to
you and Taco about them in a few days.

Peter:

> > That's the feeling I'm getting.  I'm finding it hard to do a lot of
> > basic things in Context.  Maybe Context can do them and maybe it
> > can't, but there is no way to find out.
>
> Could you please provide a typical example?

Here are ten:

1. columns and marginal notes conflict:
\setupcolumns[n=2,rule=off,distance=20pt]
\setupinmargin[style=\ss,align=outer]
\startcolumns
text text \inmargin{text} text
\stopcolumns
The marginal notes always print to the left of the column.  This works
perfectly for the left column, but fails for the right column---they
overprint the text of the left column.

2. leftward protrusion fails
\definefontfeature[...][default][...,protrusion=quality,expansion=quality]
\setupalign[hanging,hz]
\showgrid  % or \showframe
There is no leftward protrusion at all.  Everything on the left edge
is flush with the margin, even 'T' and 'J'.  Similarly:

3. protrusion fails in footnotes:
Even on the right edge.  Hz isn't happening in them either.

4. interactive headers/footers
I'd like to make my header and footer texts hyperlinks to the head
that they point to.  I'm trying this:

\setupinteraction[state=start,color=darkgreen,contrastcolor=darkred]
\setupinteractionscreen[option=fit,view=fit]

\newcommand{\gmpt}{\getmarking[pt]}
\newcommand{\swpt}{{\goto{\getmarking[part]}[\gmpt]}}
\setupfootertexts[margin][\rlap\swpt\hfill][\hfill\llap{\getmarking[chapter]}]

(By the way, I'm resorting to this misdirection with the \newcommands
only because Context gives me an error whenever it finds nested
brackets.  E.g.,
\newcommand{\swpt}{{\goto{\getmarking[part]}[\getmarking[pt]]}}
would fail.)

Then, at the beginning of a part, I have to add the extra marking to
carry the reference in the 'pt' marker (right?), e.g.:

\part[pt:one]{One}\marking[pt]{pt:one}

But this does not work.  (By the way, all of this \defineXYZ,
\setupXYZ, \XYZ stuff is confusing.  It seems like there is some kind
of purpose to this pattern of naming, but I can't find what it is.)

So, I experimented:
{\about[pt:one]}
(a particular reference) works
{\about[\gmpt]}
(referring through the marking) fails---so I can find no automatic way
of doing it.

(By the way, why are my footnote markers all green---shouldn't they be
red?  could I make them black?  Why does clicking on them sometimes
send me to a random page?)

5. footnotes break between pages
How do I stop this?

6. hyphenation between pages.
How do I stop this?

7. opening state
I'd like my document to open in Adobe reader showing one page at a
time (as if "click to open one page at at time" had been pressed).

8. description
I spent the evening trying to get \definedescription to set a
description on a line of its own followed by an explanatory paragraph.
 I tried most of the keys/values.  I never got anything that looked
good, let alone close to what I wanted.  Finally, I spent a few
seconds writing a humble LaTeX-esque line:
\newcommand{\defhead}{\switchtobodyfont[gillSB,12pt]\ss}
\newcommand{\desclist}[2]{\crlf{\noindent\defhead #1\emspace#2}\crlf}
that did the job.

9. \raisebox?
What is the proper way to raise or lower a bit of text?  I just spent
a lot of trial and error to find this:
\inframed[frame=off,offset=.5pt,height=17.3pt]{--}
to raise my en-dashes a little when \setff{ac} (for all caps) didn't
work with one font.

10.  problematic characters in grid typesetting.
Unless I set grid=verytolerant, my 'Q' knocks the next line down a
notch.  Is there a better way to deal with this?

> > switch and finding it practically impossible.   I imagine many people
> > try, spend a week trying to get it to work and then give up and go
> > back to LaTeX.
>
> Why do you?

Because I think it might be possible to produce better output with
Context than with LaTeX (is this true?).  My experience has been quite
different from yours.  I got up an running with LaTeX in a week (in
1995), found the documentation clear and almost any effect I wanted
easy to achieve with well-documented packages that never seriously
conflicted.  This, on the other hand, is a nightmare.
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