Radhelorn wrote:

Adrian Drury wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm having trouble using dropped caps within \startlines\stoplines.
> I'm trying to typeset some poetry and I'm using
> \setuplines[space=yes]. I'd like to use dropped caps and have the
> indented lines be additionally indented by any space at the beginning
> of the lines.
>
> See the following example - the first part shows roughly the result I
> want (but with manual formatting/spacing), the second part shows the
> result of \DroppedCaps inside \startlines\stoplines, and the third
> part uses the lettrine module. The lettrine module comes close, but
> Nindent doesn't seem to affect the indented lines within
> \startlines\stoplines.
>
> \usemodule[lettrine]
> \def\MyDroppedCaps%
> {     \DroppedCaps
>         {} {Serif} {2\baselineskip} {2pt} {1\baselineskip} {2}
> }
> \setuplines[space=yes]
>
> \starttext
> \MyDroppedCaps S{\sc umer} is icumen in,\crlf
> \hbox to .6em{}Lhude sing cuccu!\crlf
> Groweth sed, and bloweth med,\crlf
> \hbox to .6em{}And springth the wude nu---\crlf
> \hbox to 3.3em{}Sing cuccu!
>
> \startlines
> \MyDroppedCaps S{\sc umer} is icumen in,
>   Lhude sing cuccu!
> Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
>   And springth the wude nu---
>           Sing cuccu!
> \stoplines
>
> \startlines
> \lettrine{S}{umer} is icumen in,
>   Lhude sing cuccu!
> Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
>   And springth the wude nu---
>           Sing cuccu!
> \stoplines
> \stoptext
>
> Any suggestions for how to do this? I'm a beginning ConTeXt user, so
> if there's a better/different way to do this, I'd be happy to hear it!
>
> Also, I read the list in digest form. For the benefit of people using
> threaded mail readers, is there a better way to reply to individual
> messages than replying to the digest message and editing the Subject
> line appropriately?
>
> Thanks very much,
> Adrian Drury
> _______________________________________________
> ntg-context mailing list
> ntg-context@ntg.nl
> http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
>
>

Try

\startlines
\vbox{\lettrine{S}{umer} is icumen in,\crlf Lhude sing cuccu!}
  Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
    And springth the wude nu---
            Sing cuccu!
\stoplines

--
Radhelorn < radhelorn@mail.ru>

Thank you very much for your suggestion - it does most of what I want to do. I have a follow-up question if anybody would like to provide more help!

Because lines in \startlines\stoplines with \setuplines[space=yes] can be indented by space characters, I want to set Nindent for the dropped cap to (N * <width of space character>), so lines can be indented by the exact same amount they would be with spaces in \startlines\stoplines.

Is there a way to calculate the width of some number of characters (or a string of characters) to use as a dimension parameter? For example, a macro that returns the width in points of 5 space characters in the current font? I figured hardcoding the width of a space as a percentage of an em might work, but would probably not be consistent across fonts. Is that true, or is it really that simple?

I'd also be happy with a way to preserve spaces in the text inside the vbox (and ignore any Nindent dimension calculation), because then I could just add the appropriate number of spaces for indentation after the \crlf, like this: \vbox{\lettrine{S}{umer} is icumen in,\crlf <2 spaces>Lhude sing cuccu!}, as I do in \startlines\stoplines.

Thanks very much,
Adrian Drury