Recently there have been reports of the first letter of a line of
text being lost in the database and letter modules.
I tracked down what appears to be the same problem and developed a
work-around.
The problem appears to be with the \grabbufferdata command.
Something has changed in the way it works, and it now swallows the
first token of the buffer that it grabs. It may also show up with
other commands, but this is the only one I have found in my
projects.
If you have code with this command, a workaround is to insert
\ignorespaces after it. I have no idea why this helps. If you do not
have the code (if it is in somebody else's module), then using a
blank line or dummy argument or \relax after the command that calls
the code with \grabbufferdata may help.
The following code shows the issues and these workarounds.
% macros=mkvi
\starttexdefinition unexpanded startNoIgnore
\begingroup
\dostartNoIgnore
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition dostartNoIgnore
\grabbufferdata[Test][startNoIgnore][stopTest]
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition unexpanded startWithIgnore
\begingroup
\dostartWithIgnore
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition dostartWithIgnore
\grabbufferdata[Test][startWithIgnore][stopTest]
\ignorespaces
\stoptexdefinition
\starttexdefinition stopTest
\getbufferdata[Test]
\endgroup
\stoptexdefinition
\define\TestText
{\qquad If you can read this the first token was not
swallowed.}
\starttext
\subject{Test without \tex{ignorespaces}}
First, the problem:
\startNoIgnore\TestText\stopTest
And the same with \type{{}}
\startWithIgnore{}\TestText\stopTest
Workaround with \tex{relax}
\startNoIgnore\relax\TestText\stopTest
Workaround with blank line
\startNoIgnore
\TestText\stopTest
\subject{Test with \tex{ignorespaces}}
This now works:
\startWithIgnore\TestText\stopTest
And the same with \type{{}}
\startWithIgnore{}\TestText\stopTest
And the same with \tex{relax}
\startWithIgnore\relax\TestText\stopTest
And the same with a blank line after the opening
\startWithIgnore
\TestText\stopTest
\stoptext
--
Rik Kabel