En/na Corin Royal Drummond ha escrit:
Wei-Wei Guo wrote:
Hi everyone,
After fighting with ConTeXt one month, I find it's too difficult. I
have two years
experience of LaTeX. I never thought ConTeXt could be so difficult.
Using ConTeXt
is like climbing a steep mountain, every step need extensive
searching, reading,
and asking.
Sorry for the useless complain. I'm stuck by so many problems. I
might be lack of
the basic knowledge of ConTeXt. Could someone tell me where I can
find manuals or
papers that describe the logic of ConTeXt design and basics of
ConTeXt programming.
Thanks in advance.
Best wishes,
Wei-Wei
Yes, there is a hole in that way. I'm agree too.
Many have voiced the same complaint. I understand that Hans and every
one are occupied with building MKIV (aka LuaTeX), and that
documentation is not their highest priority. There's the wiki, the
wonderfully active mailing list, and what used to be decent docs from
2001/2002 timeframe. But yes, it's a steep hill to climb, made worth
it only by the relative awesomeness of ConTeXt.
If there is an existing strategy for creating documentation, I'd love
to hear it.
My feeling is it's it's time to pay someone to write some good docs.
Someone who's not on the development team, who has experience writing
technical documentation, and who can shepard list members into crowd
sourcing some real documentation.
The problem is who. Who has this high technical knowledge and he/she is
not developer?. People I know that have this high tech knowledge of
ConTeXt is developer.
MKIV is stabilizing into usefulness, and now is a good time to
start. I suspect list members would donate to such a project, plus we
could get some grant money (if that's not all dried up due to the
global economy), and maybe some contribution from Pragma itself, and
other orgs that depend on ConTeXt. A patchwork quilt of financing,
and a project coordinator/writer who sees their work as a labor of
love, and a side job, could make this happen. Even if we could only
afford 10 hours of work a week, that could get a lot done.
In terms of process, I think someone to comb the list archives for
common problems and solutions, and wikify them would get the most bang
for the buck initially. These wiki entries could later be
ConTeXtified into printed (and screen) docs, like Hans' awesome old
manuals.
Good idea.
Just a suggestion. If someone starts new documentation, it should be
free. Now the "only" documentation for users is "ConTeXt manual",
"Context, an excursion" (and some PracTeX journal and MAPS journal
articles). These documents are copyrated by Pragma. And for the other
hand the license of documentation of ConTeXt is Creative Commons
Atribution Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.
I think it's better if the new documentation were free: Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 or GNU
Free Documentation License. It could estimulate more users than now.
It's my opinion.
Honestly, we've got smart people wasting time answering the same
questions in different ways on the list, when they could be plugging
in some of that time into writing docs for everyone. And as useful as
the list is, it's no substitute for manuals.
Really how many people are using ConTeXt and how many developers are here?
For example, how many people are subscribing in this list: it could
tells us what's the number of users.
If I understood ConTeXt I'd volunteer, but I'm a noob, so I'm feeling
the same frustration as Wei-Wei. I feel bad having to bug developers
and advanced users every time I have a basic question. It's
inefficient and inelegant, though I much appreciate the access to
great minds and the window into the development process this has given
me.
Pile on to this thread, if this is a burning issue for you, or you
have some strategy or expertise to offer.
Cheers,
Corin
Regards,
Xan (a simple user)
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