black magic, all of it! i tell you! :))) well, Hans, i guess your middle name is \T for \TeX :)
when the poem gets long, i need to start a new page obviously. but page is not working. what am i missing here?
that it's unbreakable stuff (vbox)
also, using \page is one thing, good for me, so i could tell, flush the page right here, but i thought i'll get an automatic pagebreak when the text gets to the bottom....
actually, this is a rather complex situation; one could use a tabulate
i myself had this feeling that the columns will not behave if longer than a page. but i had my fingers crossed, because they are set up as "paragraphs" (\setupparagraphs), and paragraphs don't have problems with page break, do they? but after sending the mail, it just occured to me, that in this special case, poems, static text, don't need much flexibility or automagic, so doing a \startpoem \section{poem} \poem\startlines line 1 line 2 \stoplines\stoppoem \page\startpoem \poem\startlines line 3 line 4 \stoplines\stoppoem \stoptext does exactly what i want :))) nevertheless what you just did there was very impressive.... i will study it in details, but i am not a great tex master. i'd like to do context/books for a living, but until it's only a hobby, it just needs too much effort learning all the stuff, and to "keep in shape". my biggest problem with starting context is the lack of examples. it is not hard to find .tex files for latex, but context is different... i think it would certainly help heaps if the manual source was released, just like the \TeXbook's... at least the old manual's sources... i think i have read something about this issue, but i don't remember where or when :) i know it must be an awful lot of work to make impressive manuals like that, but they are not sold commercionally, are they? is it not the aim to make context more widespread? so when we post a question here about a silly layout problem, hundreds and hundreds of people would answer :))) i will certainly try to put more examples into the wiki, after i understand them :) -f -- one family builds a wall, two families enjoy it.