Wolfgang: Thanks---I'll go over what I can of those this weekend and get back to you and Taco about them in a few days. Peter:

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That's the feeling I'm getting. I'm finding it hard to do a lot of basic things in Context. Maybe Context can do them and maybe it can't, but there is no way to find out.

Could you please provide a typical example?

Here are ten: 1. columns and marginal notes conflict: \setupcolumns[n=2,rule=off,distance=20pt] \setupinmargin[style=\ss,align=outer] \startcolumns text text \inmargin{text} text \stopcolumns The marginal notes always print to the left of the column. This works perfectly for the left column, but fails for the right column---they overprint the text of the left column. 2. leftward protrusion fails \definefontfeature[...][default][...,protrusion=quality,expansion=quality] \setupalign[hanging,hz] \showgrid % or \showframe There is no leftward protrusion at all. Everything on the left edge is flush with the margin, even 'T' and 'J'. Similarly: 3. protrusion fails in footnotes: Even on the right edge. Hz isn't happening in them either. 4. interactive headers/footers I'd like to make my header and footer texts hyperlinks to the head that they point to. I'm trying this: \setupinteraction[state=start,color=darkgreen,contrastcolor=darkred] \setupinteractionscreen[option=fit,view=fit] \newcommand{\gmpt}{\getmarking[pt]} \newcommand{\swpt}{{\goto{\getmarking[part]}[\gmpt]}} \setupfootertexts[margin][\rlap\swpt\hfill][\hfill\llap{\getmarking[chapter]}] (By the way, I'm resorting to this misdirection with the \newcommands only because Context gives me an error whenever it finds nested brackets. E.g., \newcommand{\swpt}{{\goto{\getmarking[part]}[\getmarking[pt]]}} would fail.) Then, at the beginning of a part, I have to add the extra marking to carry the reference in the 'pt' marker (right?), e.g.: \part[pt:one]{One}\marking[pt]{pt:one} But this does not work. (By the way, all of this \defineXYZ, \setupXYZ, \XYZ stuff is confusing. It seems like there is some kind of purpose to this pattern of naming, but I can't find what it is.) So, I experimented: {\about[pt:one]} (a particular reference) works {\about[\gmpt]} (referring through the marking) fails---so I can find no automatic way of doing it. (By the way, why are my footnote markers all green---shouldn't they be red? could I make them black? Why does clicking on them sometimes send me to a random page?) 5. footnotes break between pages How do I stop this? 6. hyphenation between pages. How do I stop this? 7. opening state I'd like my document to open in Adobe reader showing one page at a time (as if "click to open one page at at time" had been pressed). 8. description I spent the evening trying to get \definedescription to set a description on a line of its own followed by an explanatory paragraph. I tried most of the keys/values. I never got anything that looked good, let alone close to what I wanted. Finally, I spent a few seconds writing a humble LaTeX-esque line: \newcommand{\defhead}{\switchtobodyfont[gillSB,12pt]\ss} \newcommand{\desclist}[2]{\crlf{\noindent\defhead #1\emspace#2}\crlf} that did the job. 9. \raisebox? What is the proper way to raise or lower a bit of text? I just spent a lot of trial and error to find this: \inframed[frame=off,offset=.5pt,height=17.3pt]{--} to raise my en-dashes a little when \setff{ac} (for all caps) didn't work with one font. 10. problematic characters in grid typesetting. Unless I set grid=verytolerant, my 'Q' knocks the next line down a notch. Is there a better way to deal with this?

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switch and finding it practically impossible. I imagine many people try, spend a week trying to get it to work and then give up and go back to LaTeX.

Why do you?

Because I think it might be possible to produce better output with Context than with LaTeX (is this true?). My experience has been quite different from yours. I got up an running with LaTeX in a week (in 1995), found the documentation clear and almost any effect I wanted easy to achieve with well-documented packages that never seriously conflicted. This, on the other hand, is a nightmare.