Re: [NTG-context] ntg-context Digest, Vol 103, Issue 37

15 Jan 2013

      Thank you, Sietse,

That works a treat. And thank you for your idea of looking at the source code. I should do that more often to ease myself into understanding TeX a bit better. At the moment I still look at myself as a "user".

Regards,
Malte.

On 14/01/2013, at 7:00 PM, ntg-context-request@ntg.nl wrote:
...
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:44:59 +0100
From: Sietse Brouwer 
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users 
Subject: Re: [NTG-context] Controlling Appearance of \inoutermargin
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi Malte,
This mail contains (1) an answer to your question; (2) a minimal
working example; (3) an explanation of how I found this out (I had
never heard of inoutermargin before).
(1) An answer to your question.
I grepped the ConTeXt source code for `inoutermargin`, and found out
it is an instance of the `margindata` class. This is its setup
command:
\setupmargindata[inoutermargin][style=bold,color=red]
(2) A minimal working example. It is nice to include an MWE when you
ask a question -- it makes things easier for people who want to try to
answer the question, because they don't have to think up their own
example. Anyway, I'm including this one for the benefit of people who
stumble across this e-mail from the future, and want to play with
\inoutermargin. :-)
\setuppapersize[A8,landscape] % w x h is about 7.5x5
\setuplayout[
   backspace=1cm,
   width=3cm,
   %
   leftmargin=0.5cm,
   leftmargindistance=2mm,
   %
   rightmargin=2cm,
   rightmargindistance=2mm]
\setuppagenumbering[alternative=doublesided]
\showframe
\startbuffer
   asdf asdf asdf
   \inoutermargin{bsdf}
   \page[yes]
\stopbuffer
\setupmargindata
   [inoutermargin]
   [style=bold,color=red]
\starttext
   \getbuffer
   \getbuffer
   \getbuffer
\stoptext
(3) How I found the answer
Whenever I want to learn about a command I don't know yet, I grep for
it in the source code. (I ignore bits like 'setup' or 'start'.) I've
even got a shell command for it, to make searching the source as easy
as possible:
function grepcon {
   cd /opt/context/tex/texmf-context/tex/context/base/
   grep -R $* *
}
`grepcon inoutermargin` gave me two hits in mkii files, and one in
typo-mar.mkiv:
\definemargindata[inoutermargin][\v!outer][...various style
setups...]. That set me on the right track. If you frequently need to
work out how commands work, I cannot recommend enough that you make
your own source-searching function and use it enough. For me, at
least, it's enormously helpful.
Cheers,
Sietse

Re: [NTG-context] ntg-context Digest, Vol 103, Issue 37

Malte Stien