But the frame from setlayerframed has not the measures of the text, to get the correct size you need textbackground.
Ah, I see! The reason I asked is I didn't see any frame with your code... I presume I need to hook some MP overlay into textbackground?
\definelayer[test][width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]
\setupbackgrounds[page][background=test]
\starttext
\startbuffer[test] \hsize=12cm \startsimplecolumns \input zapf \stopsimplecolumns \stopbuffer
\setlayerframed [test] [x=5cm,y=10cm] [width=12cm] {\getbuffer[test]}
\page[empty]
\stoptext
No, that doesn't solve my problem :-( Compare the two buffers and watch the space between the frame's top border and the first line of text: --- \definelayer [test] [width=\paperwidth, height=\paperheight] \setupbackgrounds [page] [background=test] \starttext \startbuffer[test] \hsize=12cm \startsimplecolumns \input zapf \stopsimplecolumns \stopbuffer \startbuffer[test2] \input zapf \stopbuffer \setlayerframed [test] [x=5cm, y=10cm] [width=12cm, % align=normal, offset=none] {\getbuffer[test]} % {\getbuffer[test2]} \page[empty] \stoptext --- Also, I forgot to mention that I need three columns... my apologies.
You can set \textheight in the streamlayer settings and disable the balancing for columns.
I managed to disable the balancing but I can't get the text height right. I'm probably not seeing the obvious but neither \textheight{10cm} nor \overloadtextwidth{10cm} between \startsetups and \stopsetups do the job :-( Please advise... Oliver