RE: Simple Definition Invocation Disappears

Jeffrey Kingston <[email protected]> Tue, 1 May 2018 08:27:07 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.comp.type-setting.lout
Message-ID <8438E4EB05414548A72CBFE47274C41D0144670BE4@ex-mbx-pro-05>
Dear Brian,

Apart from the braces after num that Uwe has already pointed
out, your code does not do what you expected it to because
@DropCapTwo contains both a galley and, more importantly, a
galley target.  Having both a galley and its target inside
a definition is bad news.

What happens is that Lout notices that the @Sef symbol's
body contains a galley target, and marks it as being to be
expanded only on demand, that is, only when a galley targeted
to that target comes along.  But such a galley will be created
only when the symbol is expanded.  Until it is expanded there
is no reason to expand it, so it never gets expanded and its
actual value is @Null, a kind of emptier-than-empty object.

In these cases I tend to use Lout macros.  I expect that
@DropCapTwo is a macro, but I haven't checked.  I did try
it outside the definition and I got quite a nice result, IMO.

Jeff
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