On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 12:06, Marco wrote: > On Fri, 14 May 2010 00:37:44 +0200, Mojca Miklavec wrote: > >> PS: I would say: better use \sometxt which is far more reliable unless >> you have to use textext to do string manipulation. > I don't know exactly which transformations are considered as »string > manipulation«. I've read your MyWay on \sometxt. Brilliant piece of doc. But > I've three questions. > > i) Is it about MkII, MkIV or both?
It's mostly about MkII. In MKIV it should work, but it doesn't make such a huge difference since textext works as well as \sometxt in MkII. textext in MkII can sometimes be very inefficient. > ii) Is it still up-to-date? Apart from a recently reported bug I don't know of any changes in MkII, but maybe I should write a few words about MkIV. > iii) Why should I better use \sometxt? > What do you mean by »more reliable«? After having read your MyWay I would say > that textext is more reliable because it can do dynamic text. Dynamic text counts as "feature" for me, not as "something that'" > I created a testfile to compare textext and \sometxt. The points to compare > were those you mentionend in your MyWay as advantages of \sometxt. The > testfile »t.tex« is attached. I processed it with > > ConTeXt ver: 2010.05.08 > luatex, version beta-0.60.1-2010042821 As already mentioned by Hans, the only difference, > Here are my results: > > -There is one obvious reason: speed > > Average runtime: > textext variant: 56s > \sometxt variant: 57s > > That is the same. Maybe my test file is not appropriate to test the speed. I'm > sure you have performed more advanced tests. For gnuplot-generated graphics compile time has been reduced from 10 minutes to 20 seconds. But that's another story (many graphics, many text labels inside each graphic; textext was not optimized). > -Document-wide definitions are seen > [...] definitions with arguments will fail to work. > > The first line, a document-wide definition with arguments works in both > versions. But that's only true with MkIV. In MKII it's another story. > -Problems with expansion > [...] as far as I remember math expressions (fractions perhaps) never > worked as they were supposed to > > The second definition is a math expressions with fractions. It seems to work. Many math expressions have later been made unexpandable and started working, but it felt like a neverending story. Almost the same as the example that you were asking for. > I know, your MyWay is old. Maybe some things are fixed now. But I don't see > many advantages for me using it. If you are using MkIV and don't run into the same problem again, there is hardly a difference. > In fact, I have a problem getting random colors working. Take the following > example (taken from my earlier thread). > > % This line is needed to get »withcolor« to work? Yes, in MkII. In MkIV Hans wanted to take a different approach. > \chardef\TeXtextcolormode\zerocount > % Produces empty rectangles > for i=0 downto -3: > ran; > label(\sometxt{\bold{Test}}, (7cm,-4cm)) > rotatedaround ((7cm,-4cm),i*20) > withcolor transparent("normal", .2, (r,g,b)); > endfor; Hans replied. All in all - true, the most difference is seen in MkII. Mojca ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________