On 11/25/2008 3:21 PM, Lars Huttar wrote: ....
When I put \show\rm in the .tex file to display the definition of the \rm macro, and run texexec, I get:
\rm=\protected macro: ->\setcurrentfontstyle {rm}. l.7 \show\rm By contrast, according to http://webpages.charter.net/davidlha/.trm/trmi.html, "Plain TeX defines \rm to be `\fam=0 \tenrm'." So clearly the definition of the \rm macro is different in ConTeXt than it is in Plain TeX.
P.S. The same TeX reference reports, "This switch plus the assignments made by Plain TeX are what makes `${\rm text }$' typeset `text' in roman instead of in italics [154]." where [154] refers to the page number in the TeXbook. The latter says "The control sequence \rm is an abbreviation for '\fam=0 \tenrm'; thus, \rm causes \fam to become zero, and it makes \tenrm the "current font." In horizontal mode, the \fam value is irrelevant and the current font governs the typesetting of letters; ... [stuff about math mode, which doesn't seem to apply to this situation]." FWIW.