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I am frustated newbie trying to create my first real document with ConTeXt, I thought: "nice, this is less annoying than LaTeX, let's go for it!".

Now, I am working on a letter using the t-letter module and it turns out to be terribly frustrating !

I really do not get the logics behind this module.

  • why having redundant 'sections' and 'layers' rather than having everything defined as layers ?

Edit / reformulate: In the t-letter module, 'head' is defined as a 'layer' and 'letterhead' is defined as a 'section'. Why is that? Aren't 'head' and 'letterhead' the same thing? Why is the advantage of 'sections' over 'layers'? Since layers can be positioned anywhere and stacked, why not having everything defined as 'layers'?

Edit: Coming from LaTeX, I was expecting that defining 'variables' using

\setupletter[%
  fromname={sendername},
  fromphone={senderphone}]

would be enough to put the phone number into the sender's block, possibly adding a switch in \setupletterlayer[head]. Yet it seems necessary to redefine 'head' using \defineletterelement. Then, why not defining the 'head' block directly with something like \framed, without using the t-letter module? Or am I missing something here?

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If you have the code that upsets you maybe you can post it and ask the best practices to improve it. I am not a ConTexT user but there are members here who can help you with it if you just ask in a nice way... with compilable MWE. – hpesoj626 Dec 7 '12 at 14:15
BTW Welcome to TeX.SX – texenthusiast Dec 7 '12 at 14:20
@Olivier,is this the code you have problem with ? – texenthusiast Dec 7 '12 at 14:30
The question is currently closed, see below to know why. Don't worry, it can be reopened if you would change it to a real objective question, which requires a solution. – Stefan Kottwitz♦ Dec 7 '12 at 16:12
@Olivier: In general, the ConTeXt setup is more flexible, and for that to work, it is more abstract. I don't use t-letter module, so I cannot provide the specific rationale in this case. But to draw contrast, the ConTeXt sectioning mechanism is more complicated than LaTeX: first there are hierarchical division of sections called section-1, section-2 etc. (these are usually not visible at the user level); then there is the user visible section heads called chapter, section etc. Each section head has a coupling argument (useful when you have numbered and unnumbered elements ...) – Aditya Dec 7 '12 at 19:36
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closed as not constructive by egreg, Claudio Fiandrino, Martin Schröder, Stefan Kottwitz♦ Dec 7 '12 at 16:09

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