[NTG-context] thousand separator space

[Max Chernoff]

Hi Jan,


> Why is there an additional space after the thousand separator in math mode?

Because something like

   ${\mathbb N} = \{1,2,3,4,\dots\}$
   
would look quite bad without any space between the numbers.

(The technical reason is that commas have the math class \mathpunct,
meaning that TeX automatically adds a space after them. Adding the
braces converts it to \mathord, which doesn't add any spaces.)

> And what can I do to get rid of the additional space?

The TeXbook recommends that you wrap the comma in curly braces

   $x = 1{,}000$
   
but there's probably a ConTeXt \setupxxx command that would have the same
effect. 

Many European languages use the comma as a decimal separator, so I'd
generally recommend using a thinspace (\,) instead of a comma as a
thousands separator to avoid confusion. 

Thanks,
-- Max