Frame with solid left line

Posted on August 18, 2017

Adding a solid line on the left side of a frame, block quote, etc. creates a simple, clean, and attractive visual effect that I like.

Simple example

I don’t know when I first came across this style, but it is used commonly on the Internet to show blockquotes. So, how do we get this style with ConTeXt?

It is pretty straight-forward to get this effect. All we need is, well, define a frame with a left border. For example, the above image was obtained using:

\definecolor[darkgray]  [s=0.5]
\definecolor[lightgray] [s=0.95]

\defineframedtext
  [leftbartext]
  [
    width=broad,
    frame=off,
    framecolor=darkgray,
    leftframe=on,
    rulethickness=2ex,
    offset=0.25ex,
    loffset=3ex, 
    background=color,
    backgroundcolor=lightgray,
  ]

and then use it as

\startleftbartext
...
\stopleftbartext

It is also straight forward to inherit from the leftbartext frame defined above to get frames with different colors:

\definecolor[darkred]   [r=0.8]
\definecolor[darkgreen] [g=0.8]
\definecolor[darkblue]  [b=0.8]

\definecolor[lightred]   [0.95(red,white)]
\definecolor[lightgreen] [0.95(green,white)]
\definecolor[lightblue]  [0.95(blue,white)]

\defineframedtext
  [exampletext]
  [leftbartext]
  [
    framecolor=darkgreen,
    backgroundcolor=lightgreen,
  ]

\defineframedtext
  [alerttext]
  [leftbartext]
  [
    framecolor=darkred,
    backgroundcolor=lightred,
  ]

\defineframedtext
  [blocktext]
  [leftbartext]
  [
    framecolor=darkblue,
    backgroundcolor=lightblue,
  ]

which give the following three frames

Green colored left frame Red colored left frame Blue colored left frame

 <Drop shadows with lifted corners | Typesetting differential equations>

This entry was posted in Visualization and tagged backgrounds, framed.