Am 28.08.2014 um 18:17 schrieb Werner Hintze <w.hintze@posteo.eu>:

Sorry. I don’t understand. If I use maxwidth (line 2 without the %), I get just one truncated line of the text. But I’d like to have all the text, somewhat indented on both sides, but not truncated.

But why is the text without maxwidth indented on the right?

When you enable the pagenumber context puts some space between the number and the text.

\definelist[chaptertext]
\setuplist [chaptertext][margin=2em,pagecommand=\gobbleoneargument]
%\setuplist [chaptertext][margin=2em,pagenumber=no]

\starttext

\placelist[chapter,chaptertext]

\chapter{This is a chapter}

\writetolist[chaptertext]{}{\input ward }

\stoptext

Wolfgang