August 2026 - ntg-context

ConTeXt Garden: update on recent documentation revisions
by Jean-Pierre Delange 31 Aug '26

31 Aug '26

Dear list, I would like to give a brief update on the work I have been doing on the ConTeXt Garden over the past few months. This message is intended both for current subscribers to the list and as a record in the archives for readers who may later encounter these pages. On 18 July I reported a substantial revision of the Bibliography and citations material. At that stage, the amount of information gathered on the main page had made it increasingly difficult to distinguish introductory material, practical examples, reference information, explanations, and more advanced workflows. Bruce Horrocks suggested that subdividing the material might help and pointed me to Diátaxis, the documentation framework already used during an earlier reorganization of the Garden. I have since applied that approach more systematically, first to the bibliography material and then to several related areas. The general principle has been, where appropriate, to distinguish between tutorials, how-to guides, reference material, and explanation; to preserve useful existing material; to reduce duplication; and to link related pages rather than repeat the same information in several places. The main areas revised so far are: 1. Bibliography and citations 2. Footnotes and notes 3. Registers and indexes 4. Critical apparatus and scholarly editions 5. Critical editions from TEI XML 6. Languages, multilingual typesetting, RTL/BiDi, and fonts The extent of the revision has varied considerably from one area to another. Some pages have been substantially reorganized or rewritten, while others have received more limited corrections, additions, updated examples, or changes to their structure and navigation. The aim has not been to impose a uniform rewrite, but to improve each part according to its existing state and needs. Each of these areas now has a main entry page or overview that provides the structure of the topic and links to the relevant guides and related material. This revision has been part of a longer process carried out locally over several months and progressively transferred to the Garden. Wherever possible, MWEs have been compiled and checked locally and, where appropriate, again through the Garden. This has been especially important for examples inherited from older MkIV documentation or from former beta versions. Statements about old limitations, bugs, or workarounds should not simply be retained without checking them against current LMTX. The revised pages are not intended to be final. Each page that has been revised carries a notice indicating that it has recently been worked on and explicitly inviting volunteers to help correct, complete, test, or otherwise improve its contents. These notices are meant to make clear that the revision is an ongoing community effort rather than a finished or closed piece of documentation. Technical corrections, additional examples, alternative approaches, and other contributions are therefore very welcome. I would also like to thank all those who, directly or indirectly, have contributed to this work through questions, MWEs, suggestions, corrections, and discussions on the mailing list. I should also make clear that this work has required a considerable amount of time over the past months, and I do not expect to continue revising Garden pages at the same rate. Future work will be more occasional and will depend on particular questions, corrections, or needs. The main entry points are listed below. _References, notes, registers, and indexes_ Bibliography and citations https://wiki.contextgarden.net/References_notes_and_floats/Bibliography_and… Footnotes and notes https://wiki.contextgarden.net/References_notes_and_floats/Footnotes Registers and indexes https://wiki.contextgarden.net/References_notes_and_floats/Registers_and_in… _Scholarly and critical editions_ Building a critical apparatus with ConTeXt https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Building_a_critical_apparatus_with_ConTeXt Building critical editions from TEI XML https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Building_critical_editions_from_TEI_XML _Languages and multilingual typesetting_ Languages https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Input_and_compilation/Languages These overview pages provide the detailed structure for each topic and lead to the more specialized guides, examples, reference material, and related pages. Corrections, improvements, and suggestions are, of course, very welcome. Best, JP

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SVG text labels as TeX
by Jairo A. del Rio 30 Aug '26

30 Aug '26

Hi, list! Does ConTeXt have any mechanism to parse SVG text content as proper TeX? Sometimes, SVG files include math labels such as $x$, being handled by libraries such as MathJax on a browser. ConTeXt, however, only displays text verbatim. Best regards, Jairo

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Recent releases of ConTeXt LMTX crash at \starttext when expl3 is loaded
by witiko＠gmail.com 28 Aug '26

28 Aug '26

Assume the following text file `test.tex`: ``` \def\ExplFileDate{2026-06-18} \starttext foo \stoptext ``` Using a recent version of ConTeXt (2026.07.06), compiling this file with the command `context --luatex test.tex` works OK and produces the expected PDF output. Compiling this file with the command `context test.tex` produces the warnings "latex expl stuff loaded, beware of side effects", "latex backend code loaded, this can badly interfere", and "quitting run, use --fragile" in the log and the resulting PDF is incomplete (only 21 bytes). Using the command `context --fragile test.tex` only silences the last two warnings but still produces an incomplete PDF; this seems to be a bug, since I assume that the purpose of the flag `--fragile` is precisely to allow the compilation even if expl3 use is suspected.

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footnote placement issues with columnset, columns, pagecolumns
by autumnus 26 Aug '26

26 Aug '26

Dear ConTeXt developers, I am writing to report several issues I encountered when using multi‑column layouts with footnotes in ConTeXt (LMTX). I have tried three different commands – \startcolumnset, \startcolumns, and \startpagecolumns – but each exhibits a problematic behavior: - With \columnset – footnotes overlap with the main text in the columns. - With \columns – all footnotes are accumulated and printed at the very end of the environment (on the last page), instead of appearing at the bottom of the respective page where the footnote marker is placed. - With \pagecolumns – a blank page is added when a title (e.g., \chapter) is used. Below is a minimal working example that reproduces all three problems: ``` \definecolumnset[example][n=2,balance=yes] \starttext \chapter{\red XXXX} \startcolumns \dorecurse{5}{% \input tufte \footnote{\input ward \relax}} \stopcolumns \page \chapter{\red XXXX} \startpagecolumns \dorecurse{5}{% \input tufte \footnote{\input ward \relax}} \stoppagecolumns \page \setupfootnotes[n=2,location=columns] \chapter{\red XXXX} \startcolumnset[example] \dorecurse{5}{% \input tufte \footnote{\input ward \relax}} \stopcolumnset \stoptext ``` I expected that each footnote would be placed at the bottom of the page on which its marker appears, regardless of the column environment used. However, the actual output differs from this expected behavior. Could you please advise whether I am using these commands incorrectly, or if these are known bugs? I would also appreciate any workarounds or suggested alternatives for achieving proper multi‑column footnotes. ConTeXt version: mtx-context | main context file: /usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/tex/context/base/mkxl/context.mkxl mtx-context | current version: 2026.08.21 22:14 Thank you for your excellent work. Sincerely, autumnus

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section numbers to numerals
by Thomas Meyer 24 Aug '26

24 Aug '26

Hi experts, what do I need to do to get section numbers displayed as numerals? Instead of 1: One, 2: Two ... Thanks for your help! Thomas

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Cron <context@cgl> /var/www/aanhet.net/context/bin/cron/context-mirror
by root＠ntg.nl 24 Aug '26

24 Aug '26

receiving incremental file list ./ ctan.lsr document-2.htm download-1.htm download-2.htm logo-ade.png logo-cts.png logo-pod.png rss.xml show-fil.pdf context/latest/ context/latest/cont-lmt.zip context/latest/cont-mpd.zip context/latest/cont-ppc.zip context/latest/cont-sci.zip context/latest/cont-tmf.zip context/latest/cont-tst.7z context/latest/cont-tst.tar.xz context/latest/cont-tst.zip general/manuals/ general/manuals/luametafun.pdf general/manuals/luametatex.pdf sent 247,400 bytes received 88,198,450 bytes 8,423,414.29 bytes/sec total size is 804,456,406 speedup is 9.10 Running archiver: New dir: /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-24.00 402502388 /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-24.00/latest 126741221 /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-24.00/current 529243609 /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-24.00 529243609 total

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upload
by Hans Hagen 23 Aug '26

23 Aug '26

Hi, I pushed a new version that hopefully fixes a few reported issues, Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

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Cron <context@cgl> /var/www/aanhet.net/context/bin/cron/context-mirror
by root＠ntg.nl 22 Aug '26

22 Aug '26

receiving incremental file list ./ ctan.lsr document-2.htm download-1.htm download-2.htm logo-ade.png logo-cts.png logo-pod.png rss.xml show-fil.pdf context/latest/ context/latest/cont-lmt.zip context/latest/cont-mpd.zip context/latest/cont-ppc.zip context/latest/cont-sci.zip context/latest/cont-tmf.zip context/latest/cont-tst.7z context/latest/cont-tst.tar.xz context/latest/cont-tst.zip general/manuals/ general/manuals/luametatex.pdf sent 226,139 bytes received 51,552,304 bytes 6,903,792.40 bytes/sec total size is 797,651,929 speedup is 15.41 Running archiver: New dir: /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-22.00 396377659 /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-22.00/latest 126741221 /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-22.00/current 523118880 /var/www/aanhet.net/context//htdocs/archives/context-2026-08-22.00 523118880 total

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footer issue
by Alan Bowen 21 Aug '26

21 Aug '26

Hi!— I have been editing the environment files for a journal that I publish and have run into a problem concerning the first page of articles. My mwe is: \showframe \setupparagraphs[footer][n=1, width=26pc] \setuphead[chapter][page=left, footer=Data] \definetext[Data][footer][% \input ward] \starttext \setupheader[state=high] \startchapter[title=Chapter] \dorecurse{4}{\input knuth\footnote{footnote}\par} \stopchapter \stoptext What I get is the text (Data) on a single line centered and at the very bottom of the footer. What I need is a proper paragraph (for licensing info) in the footer that starts at the top of the footer and is justifed (as usual). I suspect that I am missing something and would be grateful any clues about what that might be. Alan

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Multi-paragraphs footnote
by Florent Michel 21 Aug '26

21 Aug '26

Hi, Many thanks Hans and Mikael for the new upload! I tried it on a few of my documents and realised it catches some errors which were previously silently ignored (like a missing `\stopsection`), which is a nice improvement as far as I'm concerned! I also noticed it throws an error on multi-paragraph footnotes, for instance: ``` \starttext A footnote\footnote{ Paragraph 1 Paragraph 2 } \stoptext ``` If I am not mistaken, the previous version could compile this example correctly. Not sure whether that's intended behaviour or a regression. In case that's useful, the relevant part of the log is: ``` tex error > tex error on line 1 in file ./test.tex: Undefined control sequence <lua input> <to be read again> \relax <macro> \commalistcommand ...vedlisttitle {\currentconstructionmain }\currentconstructionlistentry \relax } <macro> \handlenoteitself ...\c_strc_notes_flushed \else \strc_notes_save_indices \strc_notes_inject_text \relax \fi \ifvmode \obeydepth \else \endstrut \f ... <macro> \handlenoteinsert ...ox \handlenoteitself {#1}{#2}\stopvboxtohbox \else \handlenoteitself {#1}{#2} \fi \egroup \expand \everyafternoteinsert \endgroup <macro> \currentconstructionsynchronize ...c_strc_notes_delayed \else \handlenoteinsert \currentnote \currentnotenumber \fi \endgroup \fi \fi \ifcstok {\noteparameter \c ... ... <line 3.6> } 1 >> \starttext 2 A footnote\footnote{ 3 Paragraph 1 4 5 Paragraph 2 6 } 7 \stoptext 8 The control sequence at the end of the top line of your error message was never \def'ed. You can just continue as I'll forget about whatever was undefined.mtx-context | fatal error: return code: 1 ``` Cheers, Florent

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