[NTG-context] Accessing string contents of a macro in Lua.

24 Apr 2013

      Hi all,

Below are three methods of defining a dimension / dimension string in
ConTeXt --- the first two boil down to storing a string in a macro,
the last is a proper TeX dimen. I want to access these dimensions from
Lua.

I can access the dimen via tex.dimen.ColumnC, but how can I access the
macro contents?
If there is no solution, I can always explicitly pass the value to Lua with

    \ctxlua{var = '\measure{ColumnA}'}

, but I want to know if there is a Lua-only method to get these values.

%% MWE
\definemeasure[ColumnA][10mm]

\def\ColumnB{20mm}

\newdimen\ColumnC
\ColumnC=30mm

\startluacode
    -- print values to stdout
    logs.report('====')
    logs.report('ColumnA', context.measure('ColumnA'))
    logs.report('ColumnB', context.ColumnB)
    logs.report('ColumnC', tex.dimen.ColumnC) -- prints in scaled points
    print('====')
\stopluacode

Cheers,
Sietse

[NTG-context] Accessing string contents of a macro in Lua.

Sietse Brouwer