thanks again for the summary. hope this back and forth will not be just a waste, but something out of which we can both/all learned to improuve. Patrick Gundlach wrote:
This is partly high level ConTeXt (\framed, background) and low level TeX (hfill,...).
"partially high and low"... Here laid my question not easy to untungle for a beginner (and believe me I have read the docs, although I do not claim to remember or understand all)
Summary: define a metapost graphic, use \defineoverlay to access the mp graphic and use \framed{} to access the overlay (background=...) and use \setuphead (command=somecommand) to define your own command that acesses the \framed[background=...].
"define your own command" , but you have to know THE (default) command fist, otherwise it is hard to obtain a result (.pdf) from something that is not just a copy of someonelse .tex let me start basic, ex-1 \starttext \chapter{ciao} \stoptext let me remove \framed from your command, ex-2 \def\HeadTitle#1#2{\hbox to \hsize% {\hfil% {#1#2}\hfil}} \setuphead [chapter] [command=\HeadTitle] \starttext \chapter{ciao} \stoptext the two ex-s are not the same , because spacing between the number and the title and allignment, why? Moving your howto overlay example, indeed very useful, from subject to chapter seems to me more subtle than just changing section names