On 11/26/2008 8:11 AM, Taco Hoekwater wrote: > > Lars Huttar wrote: >> Except perhaps the documentation. I have yet to find a reference that >> clearly describes what \rm is to do in ConTeXt. One responder pointed to >> http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/cont-eni.pdf. The closest >> thing to a definition of \rm there that I could find is on p. 111: "The >> command \rm is used to switch to a roman/serif/regular style,..." > > In his first reply to your message, Aditya posted the link to the new > manual chapter on "Typography". This chapter and the following one > "Fonts" are planned to be the definitive answer to all questions > regarding fonts and font selection in ConTeXt. > > If you believe the text could be improved even further beyond the > changes already made compared to the manual at Pragma ADE, please > tell us how (for sure, the meaning of the macro \rm is not going to > change!).
Understood. :-) > We all want the manual to be as good as humanly possible, > but it is often quite hard to write at beginners' level when you > have advanced past that point yourself. Understood too. > If you can find a good (or at least better) way to express what > \rm,\ss,\tt,\hw and \cg do compared to the current prose in > co-typography, please post it. Just keep in mind that the manual > has to remain independant, so texts that presuppose knowledge of > plain TeX and/or LaTeX are not acceptable except as a side/footnote. > Thank you for being willing to take input to improve the documentation. My #1 wish would be a reference section where \rm is described unambiguously. So, for example, it would be very helpful to have it at http://texshow.contextgarden.net/, since that is presented on the ConTeXt garden wiki as a "ConTeXt command reference", "for all user-commands that can be used in ConTeXt" (cc'ing Patrick Gundlach for this reason). I see instructions there for commenting on a command, but no way to request addition of a command. In any case, an unambiguous description would be, instead of switch to a roman/serif/regular style [p. 3 of new manual chapter on typography] something like this: switch to a serif style (if that's what \rm means in ConTeXt -- I still don't know for sure). The word "regular" is ambiguous, as it commonly contrasts with "italic" but sometimes with "bold". (And should I infer now that it sometimes contrasts with sans-serif?) Similarly, "roman" can have multiple meanings. To Knuth it meant "non-italic". As far as I'm aware, the term "serif style" is unambiguous. (But I'm not a professional typographer.) Table 1.2 lists "\rm serif, regular, roman, rm" but does not say whether all the words in the right column are supposed to be synonyms for the same typeface attribute, or constitute a collection of different attributes. It appears that some of them are the internal names of styles? (the last one in each row), while others may be merely descriptive. It would be helpful to have headers on the columns in this table so that the reader knows what the data in each column indicates. If everything in the right column is a command sequence in ConTeXt (perhaps it's a defined font), it would be helpful to know that. The first column could have the header "Command", matching the table caption. The second column header depends on what the stuff in the second column is. If it's intended to be merely a natural-language description of what the command in the first column does, I think it could be clarified as follows: Command / Switch to style / Internal style name \rm / serif / rm \ss / sans serif (a.k.a. "support") / ss \tt / typewriter (monospaced) / tt \hw / handwritten / hw \cg / calligraphic / cg none / / mm I put the "Internal style name" column in there for completeness, but it's not clear to me whether this is the meaning that was intended, nor why a user would want to know about internal style names already... but maybe that's just me. Another place I would change it is p.4 under 1.3.1: "Examples of styles within a family are: ‘roman’, ‘sans serif’ and ‘teletype’" could be clarified as "Examples of styles within a family are: ‘roman’ (which in ConTeXt means ‘serif’), ‘sans serif’ and ‘teletype’". Thanks... your hard work and thick skin are appreciated. :-) Lars ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
