Understanding というところで?


> それからは先輩と学園のことや創作論についての話をして過ごした。
>
> 既に時間もいい **というところで** 、駅まで送っていくことに。

How should I understand the 〜というところで? Is it interchangeable with から in this
context? Or the two are always interchangeable? Could you please illustrate
how to use 〜というところで in an abstract sense?




「というところ」can mean "it is the case that..." "the situation is.." and so forth.
The で can be understood more abstractly here as "by way of" or "with."
Literally I would read it as "With the situation being that...." I can see
this being similar to から in this sense.

「というところだ」is also an N1 grammar structure. Aというところだ is an expression meaning
“the stage/level/degree that one would call A” and is used to describe a
speaker's feelings/opinion/estimate/guess about the current stage/situation.
The speaker is not completely sure, but the degree/amount is
about/approximately A. Often implies that the amount/degree/activity is “at
best” (usually together with せいぜい) A - it is below A level and the speaker
does not consider it to be a big/important thing. Often used with phrases
expressing quantity (quantifiers).

I would roughly understand this as "Already it was about time, so we decided
to etc."

