Re: Theorems, etc with ConTeXt

[Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu>]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, Oliver Buerschaper wrote:

> 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.

This was the first thing I noticed when I started with ConTeXt, see
http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20050526.134831.21522839.en.html 
;)

Now, I use
   \setupformulas[numberstyle=normal]
in my local setup.


> 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.

I will see if I can do anything about it.

> Have you found out anything about the end of proof markers yet?

Not yet. It is possible to have a simple solution that will work in 
90% of the case. Coming up with something that works for 98% of the 
cases is very hard. I do not understand the working of TeX to do that. 
The idea is to make sure the problem is well defined so that Hans and 
Taco can solve it :)

> I haven't tried it out but how do the AMS folks handle this issue?

The end-of-proof handling in amsthm is not correct. It requires you to 
manually put \qedhere and does not work correctly if the proof ends 
with a equation. Look at ntheorem.sty for the correct behaviour.

> Unfortunately, I don't have the TeX programming experience (yet) to 
> start digging myself ...

Even a description of the expected features and how the output should 
look like will be useful.

This is going to be slow progress due to other time constraints, but I 
should have something working in a month or two.

Aditya


>
>
>>> 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
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-- 
Aditya Mahajan | EECS Systems, University of Michigan
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~adityam | Ph: 734.262.4008