TextBackground

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TODO: Add more examples of usage of textbackgrounds. (See: To-Do List)

Pages, paragraphs, words can have a background: color or screen. Note that "screen" is deprecated in MkIV.

(See, eventually, the details manual for further explanations.)

What if textbackground doesn’t work?

The textbackground commands require write18 to be enabled; see that page for more information.

Example: multi-page backgrounded text

Perhaps one might like to offset examples from the running text, or signal to the reader that the following paragraphs contain secondary, detailed information that is of interest only to the specialists. This can be achieved using textbackground.

In contrast, Framed creates text blocks that do not span columns or pages.

In the following example, we also reduce the textwidth and bodyfont size.

\definetextbackground[secondary][
  location=paragraph,
  background=color,
  backgroundcolor=lightgray,
  leftoffset=.5\bodyfontsize,
  rightoffset=.5\bodyfontsize,
  topoffset=.5\bodyfontsize,
  bottomoffset=.5\bodyfontsize,
  before={\startnarrower\switchtobodyfont[small]},
  after={\stopnarrower},
  frame=off,]

\input knuth

\startsecondary
\input knuth
\stopsecondary

\input knuth

backgroundoffset

The options left, right, top, bottomoffset can be replaced by backgroundoffset yielding a different result:

\definetextbackground[secondary][
  location=paragraph,
  background=color,
  backgroundcolor=lightgray,
  backgroundoffset=.5\bodyfontsize,
  before={\startnarrower\switchtobodyfont[small]},
  after={\stopnarrower},
  frame=off,]

\input knuth

\startsecondary
\input knuth
\stopsecondary

\input knuth

Example: dashed underbar (by WS, 4/2011)

\definetextbackground
  [dashed]
  [location=text,
   framecolor=black,
   alternative=1,
   voffset=-\strutdp,
   background=,
   frame=off,
   dash=1]

\startdashed
\input ward
\stopdashed