On Sun, 1 May 2022, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:

> Hi,
> I was playing with the example from 
> https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Scaling_Rotating_Mirroring_Clipping#Location_parameter 
> and tried to put it in a tabulate:
> 
> 
> \useMPlibrary[dum]
> \setupexternalfigures[width=3em,height=2em,frame=on,]
> 
> %\def\TXT{\ruledhbox{\bf(XyX)}}
> \def\TXT{\externalfigure[pic]}
> 
> \starttabulate[|l|l|l|l|l|l|]
>      \NC\NC normal\NC depth\NC fit\NC broad\NC high\NC\NR
>      \HL
> \dostepwiserecurse{0}{359}{45}{%
> %\expanded{\setuprotate[rotation=\recurselevel]}
>      \NC{\expanded{\recurselevel}˚}%

Untested, but I think that you might need:

\expanded{\NC \recurselevel \noexpand\NC ... }

> This works, but \recurselevel is always 0. I know I must expand it (like 
> in the original example), but I can’t make it work within the tabulation.
> In the first column, \expanded{\recurselevel} stays 0, and 
> rotation=\expanded{\recurselevel} gives an error, while the \setuprotate 
> line has no effect (if I remove "rotation=\recurselevel", of course).
> 
> How would that work?

Remind me of a more-than-a-decade-old discussion on the mailing list, summarized here:

https://adityam.github.io/context-blog/post/tex-programming/

> Also, \HL doesn’t work at the end, and the second line of the error 
> message makes no sense:

I find that in such cases, using Lua (CLD) is the simplest solution

Aditya