At 01:50 PM 8/26/2001 +0100, Christopher Tipper wrote:
>> with some notion of z-coordinates to allow layers to be superimposed
>> using some notion of priority. Such a concept would not appear to
>> be possible in the existing TeX architectural model, and is a
>> significant barrier, in my view to commercial acceptance.
actually, it *can* be done in context sincethere is a layering model, and
actually one can do pretty sophisticated things with it -)
>Page 1: The line passes through the central float. No doubt some solution
>could be found whereby a blank white graphic is used as a background to
>the float, but this is useless if the size of the text box is not known in
>advance, and must be recalculated for every
This is indeed a good solution, just put a background there, how is the
text typeset now? Put it in a \framed and there you got your background.
>instance. This is just not sensible, and points out the need for a more
>general float mechanism. btw I have read Frank Mittelbach's work on
>xo-pfloat for LaTeX 3, and forgive my obtuseness, but what this guy calls
>'floats' are just too limited to be useful: for instance I saw no evidence
>of floats that can be arbitrarily positioned on the page in a
>deterministic manner.
the new multi column otr will give you some of the control that you want,
including spread graphics and so
>Page 2: This issue arose during compilation of XML and involves a float in
>the ConTeXt sense of the word i.e. a graphic. The problem is that the text
>does not flow accurately past the graphic on the page, and this sort of
>result would be extremely embarrassing if it were to be published. There
>is nothing I as a publisher can do to solve this issue, which looks like
>the result of a flawed algorithm.
\setuptolerance[verytolerant,stretch]
is your friend here.
>Page 3 and 4: This is more of a question, and may not be an issue at all,
>but would obviously benefit from a streamlined float handling interface.
>Page 3 is the XSLT output for the web-page of this article (printed from
>IE using Acrobat Distiller). Page 4 is the limited rendition I have with
>the Context from the same XML source. As you can see I have a photograph
>which has a rather long caption attached. Postioning the caption is
>trivial in HTML, and I have written XSL templates to transform:
> {\placefigure[\XMLpar{image}{align}{}]%
> {none}%
>How may one deal with the <caption> tags in a manner similar to the web
>layout on page 3?
just put the caption text instead of {none}
or use \startcombination[1*1] {graphic} {text} \stopcombination
this kind of things are doable.
So, live is not that hard, all you need is a bit of faith: see attachment
for an example of layering; you can imagine that there can be multiple
layers, you can also moves things around on layers, repeat them, etc etc;
[it's a nice mental exercise to figure out hwo this is done.] Now, given
that you can also hook in metapost code, imagine what you can do with
graphics spanning layers.
The issue is not so much if/how it can be done [since much more can be done
that people are made to believe, but to start thinking in how to apply
these techniques. I'm still in the proces of learning.
Hans
% output=pdftex
\starttext
\setupcolors[state=start]
\definelayer[test][position=yes]
\defineoverlay[test][\composedlayer{test}]
\setupbackgrounds[page][background=test]
\useexternalfigure[koe 1][koe]
[width=3cm,
background=color,backgroundcolor=red,
backgroundoffset=2cm]
\useexternalfigure[koe 2][koe]
[width=3cm,
background=color,backgroundcolor=green,
backgroundoffset=2cm]
\input tufte
\placefigure{}{\externalfigure[koe 1]}
\input tufte
\placefigure{}{\setlayer[test]{\externalfigure[koe 2]}}
\input tufte
\placefigure{}{\setlayer[test][hoffset=-2cm]{\externalfigure[koe 2]}}
\input tufte
\typefile{test}
\stoptext
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