August 2024 - ntg-context - NTG Mailing Lists

serial letters
by Henning Hraban Ramm 11 Nov '24

11 Nov '24

How would you approach serial letters, e.g. to all members of a club? (Actually I need to send out donation receipts.) I’d like to use the letter module, since my usual letter design is using it. I can export the addresses to CSV, JSON, Lua tables or whatever or transfer them to a SQLite db. Would it make more sense to read them in Lua and combine this data with a buffer, or to write a single tex file for every letter? I know how to do the latter, but I’d like to learn a more ConTeXt-ish way. Would it make sense to use the bibliographies module? Greetlings, Hraban --- https://www.fiee.net http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.dreiviertelhaus.de GPG Key ID 1C9B22FD

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t-downsample.lua
by Peter Münster 17 Oct '24

17 Oct '24

Hi, Please find attached a new version of the module, with some ideas from Marco. Later, I'll upload it to modules.contextgarden.net. Here a usage example: \usemodule[downsample] \setupexternalfigures[ location=default, % find hacker.jpg and mill.png cache=/tmp, % where to put the low resolution images resolution=50, % resolution in DPI conversion=downsample.pdf] % use this module \starttext \externalfigure[hacker][width=0.4\textwidth] \setupexternalfigures[resolution=20] \externalfigure[mill][width=4in, height=3in] \setupexternalfigures[resolution=200] \externalfigure[mill][width=4in, height=3in] \stoptext Hans, it would be nice, to apply this patch, to trigger new conversion, when figure dimensions change: --- grph-inc.lua~ 2019-02-14 17:04:12.000000000 +0100 +++ grph-inc.lua 2019-02-17 08:45:38.129971581 +0100 @@ -864,6 +864,14 @@ newbase = prefix .. newbase end local hash = "" + local width = figures.current().request.width + local height = figures.current().request.height + if width then + hash = hash .. "[w:" .. width .. "]" + end + if height then + hash = hash .. "[h:" .. height .. "]" + end if resolution then hash = hash .. "[r:" .. resolution .. "]" end TIA, -- Peter

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How to improve appearance of bars in frac, sqrt, etc. on screens?
by Ralph 07 Oct '24

07 Oct '24

Hello, I’m relatively new to ConTeXt (version 2024.05.31, LMTX, standalone) and really enjoy learning it so far, but I have one little problem with the appearance of horizontal bars in math mode. It seems the way ConTeXt displayed horizontal extensible bars in math mode some time ago (as used in \frac, \sqrt, \overbar, ...) was similar to the way LaTeX (PDFLaTeX and LuaLaTeX) and Plain TeX handled this, but it has changed since then. Instead of one bar there are now multiple characters attached to each other. This makes it look more consistent with the font, but unfortunately it doesn’t display well in any PDF viewer I’ve tried (on Linux, so I’ve not tried Adobe Acrobat Reader). The bars look dotted, I guess it’s due to anti-aliasing (the dots disappear when anti-aliasing is disabled, but then of course everything looks pixelated). Two screenshots are attached (different zoom levels in PDF viewer) so that you know what I’m talking about. Source: \setuppapersize[S3] \starttext \startformula \sqrt{a^2 + b^2} = \frac{1000 \cdot c}{1000} \stopformula \stoptext Is there a way to switch to the old bars for documents viewed mainly on screens, or is there any other way to improve their appearance? I couldn’t find any documentation on this, so I would be very thankful if somebody here could help out. Best, Ralph

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Draw leftframe to a description
by Gerion Entrup 07 Oct '24

07 Oct '24

Hi, I want to typeset an "excurses" description that is marked with a leftframe. The problem is that it spans about multiple pages and has footnotes. Here is an MWE: ``` %% -> mwe-framedtext.pdf \defineframedtext[excursusbg][ frame=off, leftframe=on, rulethickness=1mm, framecolor=blue, toffset=0mm, % there is an offset anyways ] %% -> mwe-textbackground.pdf % \definetextbackground[excursusbg] [ % location=text, % background=color, % backgroundcolor=lightblue, % frame=on, % loffset=10cm, % seems to have no impact % ] \definedescription[excursus][ text={Excursus:\ }, alternative=top, headstyle=bold, margin=1cm, width=broad, before={\startexcursusbg}, after={\stopexcursusbg}, ] \starttext \input ward \startexcursus[title={A Knuth extract}] \input knuth \stopexcursus \input ward \startexcursus[title={A much longer Knuth extract}] \input knuth Sometimes, sentences have footnotes\footnote{Some footnote}. \input knuth \input knuth \stopexcursus \stoptext ``` See the attached PDFs for the different results. In principal, I would like the excurses typesetted like to solution with \defineframedtext. However, this does not work with pagebreaks. Additionally, the leftframe is too long (it begins above the "Excursus" text). I tried toffset to let the leftframe begin exactly at the "Excurses" text without success. The solution with \textbackground looks somewhat promising. It supports pagebreaks, but draws above footnotes and prints a small rectangle at the end of the excursus. I also didn't found a way to specify a leftframe only. Also, loffset seems to have no effect, here. Do I use the false environments? Do you know a better solution? Gerion

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index entry with sorting and processor
by Henning Hraban Ramm 27 Sep '24

27 Sep '24

Hi again, the page number of register entries from a glossary should have a different color: \defineprocessor[glossar][color=green] \define[1]\GlIndex{\index[glossar->]{#1}} This works, but I’d like to apply a macro to the text, and then I need to set the sort order: \define[1]\GlIndex{\index[glossar->#1]{\Word{#1}}} This also works, but I get separate index entries from \index{Something} and \GlIndex{something} Glossary entries may be lowercase, but in the index I’d like to normalize to uppercase initials. (The index command is part of a lemma setup.) How can I combine the entries? I also tried \setregisterentry but didn’t find out how to use a processor for the page number. In the wiki, the (generally working) processor option is undocumented, so if there’s another option, it’s also missing. In the source, I found processors for entry & page, but not how to address the latter. MWE: """ \defineprocessor[glossar][color=green] \define[1]\GlIndex{\index[glossar->#1]{\Word{#1}}} \starttext \samplefile{ward} \index{something} \index{anything} \page \samplefile{tufte} \GlIndex{something} \GlIndex{anything} \page \placeindex \stoptext """ Hraban

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Strange extra space when using cases in an inner align in math
by Gerion Entrup 27 Sep '24

27 Sep '24

Hi, I currently have the case of a strange extra space in math mode when using cases in inner align. Here is a MWE to demonstrate the problem: ``` \definemathsimplealign[inneralign] \startdocument \startformula \startalign \NC a = b \NR \NC \NC \startinneralign[n=3,align={1:right,2:middle,3:left}] \NC A \NC = \NC B \NR \NC f(x,y) \NC = \NC \startcases \NC \text{strange} \NC a \NR \NC \text{normal} \NC b \NR \NC \text{also normal} \NC b \NR \stopcases \stopinneralign \stopalign \stopformula \stopdocument ``` "strange" and "normal" are not aligned what I would expect but strange has more space in front of it. Is this a usage error or a bug in the math engine? Best, Gerion

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PDF/UA-2, WTPDF
by Henning Hraban Ramm 20 Sep '24

20 Sep '24

Quoting a post by Philipp Kiff, https://mastodon.social/@pkiff/112219488889350928: In amongst the release of PDF/UA-2 (PDF for Universal Accessibility) and the new Well-Tagged PDF (WTPDF) standard last month, some PDF professionals may have missed two other new resources that may help explain and view them: 1. Questions and Answers about Tagged PDF from PDF association 2. Acrobat Custom File Info Panels by Peter Wyatt Last month saw the release of PDF/UA-2 and the new Well-Tagged PDF (WTPDF) standard - neither of which revokes PDF/UA-1. And none of those are the same as PDF 1.7 vs 2.0. To many, the landscape of PDF specs may now seem littered with confusing acronyms and versions! For some help disentangling it all, the PDF association has a Questions and Answers about Tagged PDF: https://pdfa.org/resource/tagged-pdf-q-a/ In related news, Peter Wyatt released Acrobat Custom File Info Panels. This is a free extension for Acrobat that adds new panels to the XMP metadata shown when you view File > Properties in Acrobat Pro. The new panels allow you to view the additional conformance claims and dated revisions of ISO standards that can now be included in PDFs, but that aren't currently visible in the standard Acrobat panels. https://pdfa.org/discovering-pdf-metadata/ One thing I realized in reading through the new standards and looking at various sample files this week is that I should probably spend some time learning LaTeX! Both LaTeX and LibreOffice are already capable of producing PDF/UA-2 files, and with some tweaking, LaTeX can produce what appear to be really good WTPDF files. Kudos to both those development teams! https://github.com/latex3/tagging-project/discussions/72 Finally, in case you missed earlier posts from last month, here are links to the official sources for the two new PDF standards that these other resources relate to: 1. PDF/UA-2 https://pdfa.org/iso-14289-2-pdfua-2/ 2. Well-Tagged PDF (WTPDF) https://pdfa.org/wtpdf/

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Steps to become a ConTeXt developer
by Shiv Shankar Dayal 08 Sep '24

08 Sep '24

Hi, I am not sure if this is the best place to ask this question but here it goes. Suppose a C programmer wants to become a core ConTeXt developer then what steps one should follow. Assume that the programmer knows only the basics of LaTeX and never wrote macros etc using TeX or ConTeXt. -- Respect, Shiv Shankar Dayal

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Is there an alternative to \reference[]{} that won't interfere with the document design?
by Joel 03 Sep '24

03 Sep '24

I had to place \reference[]{} in various places in my document as I need to refer to page numbers of a lot of various items in the document. There are hundreds of these. When placing them, I hadn't realized it would impact the document design--I assumed such a command would be invisible. Though I've tried placing as many inside the section titles, where they become invisible, I've found just placing \reference[]{} anywhere on a page will create extra blank spaces, leading my document to expand from 440 lines to 448. It added up quite quickly to 8 whole pages. No matter how much I use % or try to hide it within the page, it still produces weird results. It isn't invisible, its doing things to the document, moving text around, leaving gaps. In addition, it makes the document look haphazard, creating random formatting "glitches". I'm assuming because \reference has a curly bracket {} that its causing something to be rendered, even it its not really something visible always, it often makes a carriage return on the page if placed say after a table, or before a section title. Sadly, the way the document was designed I don't have a way to integrate them inside the section titles everywhere, there are too many and some need to mark a specific page within a section. I haven't placed anything inside the {} and only use the square brackets to mark the reference name. Is there an alternative command that won't occupy space like this? --Joel

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Has anyone packages the ConTeXt standalone distributon for nixpkgs/NixOS?
by mica＠silentumbrella.com 02 Sep '24

02 Sep '24

Hello, I'm wondering if anyone has packaged the ConTeXt standalone for nixpkgs/NixOS and if yes, can you share your derivation? Thanks! Best, Mica

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