How can I make a "vertical dotfill" environment?

Question

Wanting to highlight parts of my text, intended to be read at second reading, by an inexpensive method in packages, I want to set up an environment that would put points at the beginning and end of the line, preferably at the margins of the environment. I obviously want to be able to include in this environment to create all kinds of texts or mathematical objects, like figures, theorems, footnotes ... in particular boxes produced with tcolorbox and some other environments... so the solution must be not based on any package I think, and especially not using tcolorbox or another package producing boxes !

I give an example of what I want to create, which I made by adding \dotfill, at the beginning and at the end of the text, while adding points at the beginning and end of the line thanks to \hfill. I actually want to create a, say \vdotfill{text}, environment, based on the idea of the \dotvfill command, included in the answer of the following question vertical dotfill and then put my text between \dotfill up and down, and between some \vdotfill between right and left. Any ideas ?

Answer 1

Yes, do not reinvent the wheel:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[most]{tcolorbox}
\newtcolorbox{dottedenvironment}{enhanced,
boxrule=0pt,boxsep=1em,colback=white, arc=3mm, frame hidden,
borderline={1pt}{2pt}{red!30!black,dotted}}
\begin{document}

\begin{dottedenvironment}
\lipsum[2]  
\end{dottedenvironment}

\end{document}

Edit: As stated in the comments, It seems a requeriment that boxes should be breakable even nested. I do not know an automatic approach and I think that is not a good idea (*), but manually you can break a nested tcolorbox

(*) Note that enforce breakable option is a bit insane.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperwidth=8cm,paperheight=8cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{ltablex}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[most]{tcolorbox}
\newtcolorbox{dottedenvironment}{enhanced,enforce breakable, boxrule=0pt,boxsep=1em,colback=white, arc=3mm, frame hidden,
borderline={1pt}{2pt}{red!30!black,dotted}}
\def\dummytext{The key message for success is to keep it simple. }
\def\moretext{\dummytext\dummytext\par}
\begin{document}
\begin{dottedenvironment}
\moretext
\begin{dottedenvironment}
\dummytext
\tcbbreak
\moretext\end{dottedenvironment}
\tcbbreak
\end{dottedenvironment}
\end{document}

Answer 2

ConTeXt can do this easily using textbackground. You can also include floats (which will not be surrounded by dots because they could appear elsewhere).

\startuseMPgraphic{dottedframe}
begingroup;
  for i=1 upto nofmultipars :
    draw ( llcorner multipars[i]
      -- lrcorner multipars[i]
      -- urcorner multipars[i]
      -- ulcorner multipars[i]
      -- cycle )
      enlarged (EmWidth,EmWidth)
      dashed withdots ;
  endfor ;
endgroup;
\stopuseMPgraphic

\definetextbackground
  [DottedFrame]
  [mp=dottedframe,
   location=paragraph,
   before={\blank[2*big]}]

\starttext

\starttextbackground[DottedFrame]
Text and/or environments and/or equations

Text and/or environments and/or equations

Text and/or environments and/or equations

\startplacefigure[location=here,title={The famous Dutch cow}]
  \externalfigure[cow]
\stopplacefigure

Text and/or environments and/or equations

Text and/or environments and/or equations

Text and/or environments and/or equations
\stoptextbackground

\stoptext