On 9/6/2025 7:35 PM, Jim wrote:
On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 15:38 (+0200), Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:
Ahoi,
Ahoi (Ahoy?)? Are you getting ready for International Talk Like A Pirate
Day? :-)
I’m working on the Math chapter of my ConTeXt book. As you know, this is not
my area of expertise, that’s why I try to keep it short and mostly refer to
the math manual.
What subjects do you think I should include for beginners or readers
switching from PlainTeX/LaTeX?
Probably \alignhere and \breakhere? What else is new & different?
I think you should mention that math isn't going to look the same.
For example, attached are two PDFs
-> plain tex: $3\over 4$
-> context: \im{\frac{3}{4}}
As can be seen, in ConTeXt there is a much bigger space between the '3' and
the horizontal line. (I *really* don't want to step on toes or sound like
a complete ingrate, especially in light of the large amount of effort
(AIUI) which has gone into math typesetting, but I strongly prefer the
plain TeX version.)
it has a lot to do with consistency ... putting stuff next to each
other, more complex formulas and so on; all is configurable (see manual)
and we've chosen values that work well with the hundreds of pages and
thousands of formulas we looked at
To help plain TeX (and maybe LaTeX) refugees understand that things which
look different may not be due to them doing something wrong, pointing out
some examples where there are some typesetting differences (I assume by
design) may make the adoption of ConTeXt more expeditious for some people.
context math is definitely not for those who like to mix lots of \, \!,
\: or whatevers in formulas and like playing with compensation for the
lack of symbols, classes, who prefer to add manual penalties, tweak
spacing and deal with explicit break lines to make it look fine; a lot
in how we do math in context also relates to new possibilities in the
engine esp in making paragraphs with lots of math coming out ok without
intervention as well as display math that breaks over lines without
hackery .. of course users can still control most but it might also
interfere
basically one can set up a plain machinery but we wonder if that looks
better on the average
we don't care much about how latex renders things and we assume
publishers also have their special demands .. we dont'care about those
neither; but we do care about abstraction, consistency and structure
P.S. On the other hand, if the attached ConTeXt output is *not* how things
are supposed to look, and my installation is somehow broken, someone please
let me know.
that one is for mikael
Hans
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