ConTeXt: Disable emdash

Question

Background

Some manuscript submission guidelines prefer em dashes to remain typeset as --- rather than —.

Problem

Setting features=none for the document's body font does not appear to affect the tlig setting.

SSCCE

The following code produces a document with an em dash:

\definefontfamily [FontFace] [rm] [TeX Gyre Pagella] [features=none]
\setupbodyfont    [FontFace]

\starttext
Why hello --- and how are you?
\stoptext

Question

How do you prevent ConTeXt from changing --- to an em dash and---equivalently----- to an en dash?

ConTeXt version 2021.04.29 23:09.

Answer 1

This has been recently discussed in the mailing list (here the message by Hans). You need \nohyphencollapsing which deals both with em-dash and en-dash:

\startTEXpage
{\nohyphencollapsing Why hello --- -- and how are you?}

{Why hello --- -- and how are you?}
\stopTEXpage

As a note, you have to update your ConTeXt distribution so that this feature is available.