Multiple pleas for help (long)

[Scott Steele <scottlsteele@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6066 bytes --]

Hullo, all. I've been trying for 3 months now to get my last 2 years' worth
of journal entries satisfactorily typeset for printing on lulu.com. This is
my first major project using Context (with the Xetex engine—the current
procedures required by Pdftex to set up and manage fonts are too
intimidating for me (I {\em did} try it.)) as I'm no longer in school and
had typeset the preceding year's worth of entries in Latex. I started to use
(xe)Latex again this time but gave up in frustration with all of the
predefined formatting, which I've moved away from as I've read more of
Robert Bringhurst.

Anyway, I have a number of problems.

I apologize for putting them all into one message and for failing to find
solutions elsewhere on the site. I've looked around a great deal, but am
hampered in doing so by my limiting of my internet time with an {\sc ems}
PowerCop (otherwise, I'd be on Wikipedia until they decided to lock me
away). (I do my writing, editing, and typesetting on a little
internet-crippled netbook with CrunchBang and Vim.)

I'll include my current preämble information at the end of this message in
case it is useful in addressing any of my issues. If they're addressed
elsewhere, I'd be thrilled with links. If they're not, I'd greatly
appreciate any help.

I've found solutions to a number of previous problems, but here are all that
I believe are in the way of my finishing this project:

1
How do I make bulleted lists not have lines between items in the list?

2
Is it possible to push the bullets for bulleted lists into the margin (and
then have the text of each item start at the same level of indentation as
normal text)? Also, given my target printing medium, this would require
alteration of the space between the bullet mark and its text—how do I alter
this and the glyph used as the bullet mark?

3
Is it possible to alter the way footnotes are displayed? I might want to
have new footnotes follow previous ones with a 3-em space rather than
starting a new line in the footer. And if I go that route, I'd need a way to
pull the footer number in from the margin.

4
How can I adjust the formatting settings for the frontmatter (title page,
table of contents) and backmatter (colophon, appendices, index). In general,
I need to be able to set whether page numbers are used and what kind and
positioning of the text on the page. In particular, how do I change the
formatting for items in the table of contents (and what glyph/spacing go
between the item's title and corresponding page number as well as how all of
those elements are positioned)?

5
How can I have either unnumbered sections, or subjects that appear in the
table of contents?

6
Does Xetex or Context have a facility for positioning accents over letters
when those particular combinations are not in the font? (Or should I just go
ahead and do this manually in Fontforge?)

7
Is there a built-in equivalent of the \fancybreak function from Latex? I
think I know now how to put something like it together manually but don't
want go the amateur route if there's something more polished available.

8
Since this is just a journal, I have used simple emoticons (don't laugh!). I
tweaked a vector smiley from Wikimedia to get a frowny and slashy, and they
work well except for when they end up on the first (printed) text line of a
page. I have one page that has a subject title on the grid but that is
followed by a (logical) line with a smiley that ends up on its first printed
line. This printed line and all of the rest of the text on the page
(including another subject title) sit several points (approx) lower than
where they should (so that the grid lines bisect the bowls of all the
lower-case a's). There is another page that does not start with a subject
title but directly with a printed line containing an emoticon, and it has
exactly the same problem as the first page, with the text sitting just low
enough that the grid lines bisect the bowls of the lower-case a's. Pages
with emoticons on them do not exhibit this problem when the emoticon is not
on the first printed line, and all lines remain correctly positioned on the
grid. You can see below how I'm putting in the emoticons.


Many apologies for those answers that I failed to find, and thanks reading
the whole message,

Scott


See my current preämble below:

\version[final]

\definepapersize[pocket][width=4.25in,
height=6.875in]

\setuppapersize[pocket][pocket]

\setuplayout[location=middle,
width=0.815\paperwidth,
rightmargindistance=0in,
 leftmargindistance=0in,
height=middle,
margin=0.08\paperwidth,
 backspace=0.115\paperwidth,
marking=off,
grid=yes,
 topspace=0.018889\paperheight,
header=0.044444\paperheight,
footer=0.044444\paperheight,
 bottomspace=0.038889\paperheight]

\setuppagenumbering[alternative=doublesided,
location={footer}]

\setupinterlinespace[top=0.0] % `top=0.0' gets rid of unoccupied vertical
white space at the top of the first line

\setupwhitespace[big] % Turns on blank line between ¶’s

\definetypeface[jenson][rm][Xserif][Adobe Jenson Pro]
\setupbodyfont[jenson, 12pt]

% Emoticons
%——————————
\useexternalfigure[frowny][Frowny][factor=8,type=pdf]
\def\Frowny{\hbox{\externalfigure[frowny]}}

\useexternalfigure[smiley][Smiley][factor=8,type=pdf]
\def\Smiley{\hbox{\externalfigure[smiley]}}

\useexternalfigure[slashy][Slashy][factor=8,type=pdf]
\def\Slashy{\hbox{\externalfigure[slashy]}}


\setuptolerance[verytolerant] % Allows TeX to break lines even when doing so
would be 'ugly'

\showgrid

\startfrontmatter
\completecontent
\stopfrontmatter

\startbodymatter

\subject{2/25/08}
...





-----
This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,
events, or locales is entirely coïncidental.

[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 8367 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 486 bytes --]

___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________