Hi Mikael, On Wed, Jan 8, 2025 at 16:22 (+0100), Mikael Sundqvist wrote:

You can try

Latest news: \startitemize[packed][distance=7.5em,leftmargindistance=2em,] \sym {Bob Loblaw} blah blah blah \sym {Sally Smithers} yada yada yada \stopitemize

Works perfectly, thanks.

Inside a bracket pair, either use [a,b] or [a=b], do not mix them.

(Duh. Fortunately, there are no handy concrete walls for me to bang my head on.)

How to know what to use? In this case you can look up \startitemize in

https://www.pragma-ade.com/general/qrcs/setup-en.pdf

to see how to do it.

Thanks very much. In my (admittedly slow) ConTeXt journey, I had never realized the significance of the syntax used there (and, consequently, that I can't mix those two types of options). Or perhaps I briefly knew it and completely forgot it. Hopefully it sticks this time.

But, that said, maybe you shall define your own itemgroup for this, and set it up, since then you do not have to add these settings everytime. Also, depending on what you do, maybe a description is more what you need here.

While the packed and leftmargindistance=2em are likely to be there all the time, the distance= may change, if I have a really long name. I looked at the "description" pages in the wiki, and I don't immediately see it doing what I want (I want the text of each item to start at the same distance from the left margin). Perhaps what I really want is a table. In any case, thanks for the help, I can accomplish what I want. Even if I shouldn't want that. Jim

On Wed, Jan 8, 2025 at 4:15 PM Jim wrote:

...

Hi everyone,

...

I am using the following sort of structure:

...

Latest news: \startitemize[distance=7.5em,leftmargindistance=2em,] \sym {Bob Loblaw} blah blah blah \sym {Sally Smithers} yada yada yada \stopitemize

...

However, I wanted to achieve a "packed" list, so I tried

...

Latest news: \startitemize[packed,distance=7.5em,leftmargindistance=2em,] \sym {Bob Loblaw} blah blah blah \sym {Sally Smithers} yada yada yada \stopitemize

...

and, as you can see if you try it, the "packed" is completely ignored.

...

I discovered that using either the distance= or the leftmargindistance= parameters "cancels" the "packed".

...

I looked at the documentation I could (relatively easily) find, and I have not discovered either (1) why distance and leftmargindistance "cancel" packed, nor (2) how to uncancel this cancellation.

...

I can work around this in a number of ways (including setting \setupitemize[1][width=<some suitable amount>] ) but I'd prefer to avoid kludgy work-arounds if at all possible.

...

Can anyone tell me The Right Way to do this?

...

Thanks.

...

Jim

...

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