> Hi all,
>
> ConTeXt has many features but sometimes there is something missing, what
> feature or package do you miss which is already available in another TeX
> system or unavailable in any TeX system?
>
> Wolfgang
1. While TeX has been very strong at typesetting math traditionally its rivals
are closing up and even surpassing TeX in this area partly. However, none of
today's tools (including TeX) seem to be capable of laying out (2D) formulas
fully automatically with the finest typographic results from their mathematical
meaning alone. For example, in TeX I always find myself tweaking the spacing of
glyphs or adjusting the size of brackets (among other things) once a formula
becomes a little more involved. If TeX could make these decisions on its own it
would help tremendously.
Of course, there's a limit to what extent visual aesthetics can be cast into
algorithms ultimately but I do think that TeX can be improved significantly in
this direction. I think what will help most is teaching TeX to not only think
in terms of boxes but work with the actual glyph shapes.
For example, one could tackle the problem of delimiter sizes in the following
way. First TeX needs to keep track of how deeply a given pair of delimiters is
nested. This directly sets a certain minimal size if one wants nested brackets
to increase in size towards the outside. Next TeX typesets all the material
enclosed by the delimiters in question and inspects how the ink is actually
spread out on paper. Based on knowledge about various features of the
subformula's actual shape TeX can now make an informed decision about the
surrounding delimiters. It is clear that for a visually pleasing result this
decision will have to be different depending on whether the ink is, say,
concentrated in one spot predominantly or smeared out over a long narrow band.
So far TeX has only examined the total height of this ink distribution which
usually leads to excessively large delimiters. If one wants to quote a metaphor
from optics TeX could analyze how much the ink distribution resembles an
hourglass shaped light beam travelling back and forth between two facing
round mirrors (i.e., the delimiters). One could then demand that the brackets'
size is chosen such that a certain fraction of the enclosed ink is contained in
the beam profile.
An approach based on glyph shapes could also help TeX to decide on how it
places exponents. At the moment one has to decide manually whether an
exponential is typeset as e^{\dots} or exp(\dots). Many more cases come to mind.
However, as far as I recall from conversations with Taco and others there are
already some efforts underway to extend TeX's math skills :-)
2. I'd love to see better support for figures within formulas (in ConTeXt). I
often use diagrammatic notation and find it difficult to align diagrams with
the rest of the formula. For example, I'm missing a way to specify the math
axis from within MetaPost code. That is, I'd like to mark an invisible point in
the drawing which will later be aligned with the formula's math axis
automatically.
3. I'd very much like to second Alan's suggestion to provide containers for
text to flow in and out! Perhaps one could even go further and root ConTeXt
entire page model in such an approach. After all, it's just text flowing in and
out of pages together with fixed containers for headers and footers. This might
also provide a consistent yet flexible foundation for all things columns.
While I'm at it (and because this is a wish list) having configurable page
templates as in XSL-FO or Docscape would also be very nice :-)
Oliver
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