Hi Pablo,
Like I mentioned it depends of the paradigm one uses or to be more
expressive: the meta level of discussion.
To All: please excuse the use of buzz words in the following.
The start/stop mechanism has a different semio-syntactic usage depending on the
context (not ConTeXt) it is used in.
It can be used for :
1) do command
2) usage of format or element
3) set a variable as in start/stopbuffer
This different semantic usage is somewhat unfortunate, but has the advantage
of keeping
the instruction set(syntax) of ConTeXt simple!
The best nomenclature would be entity, but that is not easy to understand for
the average joe and jane.
On the other side the start/stop mechanism can be seen, in terms of OO, a
method that is applied to a object
that is passed to. This method is dynamic in that it calls other methods
depending of the type of object passed.
So we are in the middle of the dynamic OO-programming.
If you wish it is a method that is overloaded.
Note to Hans, Wolfgang, et al: I realize that it is not implemented as above,
but it does reflect the basic concept,
to my knowledge and its
usage in ConTeXt.
Start/stop is a mechanism that is applied to an element, object, entity.
Depending on the Enity used with it the semantics
of the mechanism is different.
So it boils down to the fact what kind of audience you are addressing and what
level of knowledge you expect them to have!
If you care to discuss this topic more in depth we can go off list.
regards
Keith
Am 03.02.2014 um 20:35 schrieb Pablo Rodriguez <oi...@gmx.es>:
> Hi Keith,
>
> many thanks for your explanation.
>
> I cannot see the “structural” difference ;-) between the start/stop and
> the begin/end pairs.
>
> But I think structure is fine. Structural element seems too complex to me.
>
> Many thanks for your help again,
>
> Pablo
>
>
> On 02/03/2014 10:07 AM, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>> Hi Pablo,
>>
>> The start/stop mechanism in ConTeXt is not easy to relate to LaTeX.
>>
>> As the name indicates it means "start/stop doing 'something' "!
>>
>> This "something" can be either equivalent to "Command" or "Enviroment"
>> in LaTeX.
>>
>> e.g:
>> \startbuffer
>> ...
>> \stopbuffer
>>
>> starts storing "things" in a buffer(aka. Variable). This would be simailar
>> to "command" as you can access the buffer with \getbuffer and \putbuffer.
>> Of course one could argue that it is actually like an LaTeX environment that
>> has
>> a side effect of setting a variable for later use.
>>
>> On the other side you have \starttable \stoptable which one would put in the
>> realm of
>> LaTeX-environments.
>>
>> One can practically, use the start/stop mechanism almost anything you define.
>>
>>
>> Depending on the paradigm that you use structure (and/or) element would be
>> appropriate!
>> That is is a program source the definition of a function/procedure/method is
>> a
>> structure/element of the program. Structure element is not necessarily
>> reserved for
>> data structures!!
>>
>> Just my two cents worth.
>>
>> Hope this helps
>>
>> regards
>> Keith.
>
>
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> http://www.ousia.tk
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