![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d39338246f50cca667c8256c313d7cfd.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 2013–07–24 Wolfgang Schuster wrote:
Apparently \brokenpenalty is not supposed to be used with \setpenalties, see spac-ver.mkiv :
\setpenalties\widowpenalties\plustwo\maxdimen \setpenalties\clubpenalties \plustwo\maxdimen \brokenpenalty \maxdimen
Actually I don't yet know what's the deal with the \setpenalties command and why it's used for some penalties and not for others.
You have to differ between the \…penalty command which come from Knuths TeX and \…penalties which are introduced with etex.
While Knuths command accept only a single value (e.g. \widowpenlty=1000) the new commands accepts multiple values which are taken for individual lines of a paragraph (e.g. \widowpenalties 3 3000 4500 9000).
I learned something new today.
The \setpenalties command simplifies the setups of the new commands.
Combined with the aforementioned new knowledge, this totally makes sense.
The reason why \widowpenalties doesn’t work with \setpenalties is that no command with this names exist (I never checked this for my example in the past).
I couldn't find the definition neither in the TeXbook, nor the ConTeXt sources. That's why. Thanks for the explanation. Marco