Thanks to Wolfgang Schuster and Bruce Horrocks I have now a working solution. I ended up following Bruce’s suggestion of doing a left hand side (LHS) page opposite the first (RHS) chapter or part page differently than using after/before modifications of the \chapter and \part setups as I had been doing years ago (but that book did not have parts and was done in mkii) The modification of \chapter and \part setups with before= and after= never worked in the \component setup in LMTX. Creating a separate command to run immediately before a \chapter or \part, as suggested by Bruce, was simpler and and turned out to be more robust. So, this single file example also works when \components are used. The only issues I have now left are very minimal. In the table of contents, the abstract for a part has some extra whitespace above, which the chapter abstracts don’t have. But that is not really a problem. And getting the part title somewhere more centred on its page is also left as an issue for later. Example file. In a project/component setup: everything before the \starttext goes into the environment file, the rest in the product file. %%% %%% Sections that have a LHS preface with a quote %%% \startsetups SectionLHSPageSetup \page[left] \setupheader[state=empty] \start \startalignment[left,nothyphenated] \startnarrower[4*left] \tf\it \stopsetups \definestartstop [SectionLHSPage] [ before={\setups{SectionLHSPageSetup}}, after={\stopnarrower \stopalignment\stop}] \define[1]\SectionPrequote{\startSectionLHSPage #1\stopSectionLHSPage} %%% %%% part is managed here %%% \defineconversionset [part] [Romannumerals] [numbers] \setuplabeltext[en][partlabel=Part~] \setuphead [part] [sectionsegments=part, bodypartlabel=partlabel, appendixlabel=, sectionconversionset=part, page=yes, header=empty, footer=empty, placehead=yes] \definelist[parttext] \setuplist[parttext][margin=1.3em,pagecommand=\gobbleoneargument] \define[1]\PartAbstract{\writetolist[parttext]{}{\start\itx#1\stop}} %%% %%% chapter is managed here %%% \definetext [chapterfooter] % name [footer] % vertical location [pagenumber] % content \setuplabeltext[en][appendixchapterlabel=Appendix~] \setuphead [chapter] [page=yes, header=empty, bodypartlabel=, appendixlabel=appendixchapterlabel, footer=chapterfooter, sectionsegments=chapter, before={\blank[force,2*big]}, after={\blank[3*big]}] \definelist[chaptertext] \setuplist[chaptertext][margin=1.3em,pagecommand=\gobbleoneargument] \define[1]\ChapterAbstract{\writetolist[chaptertext]{}{\start\itx#1\stop}} \defineresetset [default] [0,0] [1] \setupcombinedlist [content] [list={part,parttext,chapter,chaptertext}] \starttext \startfrontmatter \completecontent \SectionPrequote{If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture\crlf {\tf Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder}} \startchapter[title={One}] \dorecurse{7}{\input tufte \par \input knuth} \stopchapter \stopfrontmatter \startbodymatter \dorecurse{3}{ \SectionPrequote{The world is not \rationals, it is \reals\crlf {\tf Gerben Wierda}} \part{Title title title} \PartAbstract{This is a part abstract.} \dorecurse{2}{ \SectionPrequote{If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture\crlf {\tf Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder}} \startchapter[title={Two}] \ChapterAbstract{This is a chapter abstract.} \dorecurse{5}{\input tufte \par \input knuth} \stopchapter } } \stopbodymatter \startappendices \defineresetset[default][0,1][1] %% reset , chapter, but not part \setuphead[part][number=no] \SectionPrequote{The world is not \rationals, it is \reals\crlf {\tf Gerben Wierda}} \part{Title title title} \PartAbstract{This is a part abstract.} \dorecurse{2}{ \SectionPrequote{If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture\crlf {\tf Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder}} \startchapter[title={Two}] \ChapterAbstract{This is a chapter abstract.} \dorecurse{5}{\input tufte \par \input knuth} \stopchapter } \stopappendices \stoptext In a component setup, a part component may look like this: \startcomponent p_partone \product prd_book \project project_book \SectionPrequote{The world is not \rationals, it is \reals\crlf {\tf Gerben Wierda}} \part{Title title title} \PartAbstract{This is a part abstract for a normal part.} \component c_chapter \component c_chapter \stopcomponent and a chapter component like this: \startcomponent c_chapter \product prd_book \project project_book \starttext \SectionPrequote{If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture\crlf {\tf Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder}} \chapter{An Inconvenient Truth} \ChapterAbstract{This is a chapter abstract.} \setupindenting[next] \placeinitial I{\kap{\bf n the half}} century or so that human kind has had IT, the IT sector has increasingly wrestled with the fact that IT projects often fail in one way or another. \dorecurse{7}{\input tufte \par \input knuth} \stoptext \stopcomponent Gerben Wierda (LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerbenwierda) R&A Enterprise Architecture https://ea.rna.nl/ (main site) Book: Chess and the Art of Enterprise Architecture https://ea.rna.nl/the-book/ Book: Mastering ArchiMate https://ea.rna.nl/the-book-edition-iii/