Dear friends of Omega, I have made some good progress using Omega under ConTeXt and I would like to share some of what I have learned with you all, including a small contribution to the Omega and ConTeXt communities.
First off let me say that I am extremely impressed with the ConTeXt macropackage. Many of us use TeX and especially Omega not so much for math typesetting primarily but for superb scholarly typesetting of books and similar publications. From the point of view of the kind of _general_ typographical flexibility needed for books and journals ConTeXt far surpasses LaTeX in my opinion. By `general' I mean not taking into account mathematics and the niche areas in which LaTeX excels so well. LaTeX was originally designed to keep the user from having to make typographical decisions; this, while arguably good for publishing articles and reports, really gets in the way for scholarly publishing purposes (though the wonderful memoir class by Peter Wilson begins to address this and other issues). ConTeXt on the other hand aims to give you the broadest possible range of typographic configurability right out of the box. And it does it in an across-the-board consistent manner (as opposed to loading possibly mutually incompatible packages). Another advantage of ConTeXt is the dynamism of its development team headed by Hans Hagen. For example, I received quick and positive feedback to my inquiries about developing native critical edition capabilities for ConTeXt and I am now working with Hans to help get this done. The potential of combining Omega's multilingual capabilities with what is surely becoming the best desktop publishing solution for scholarly purposes is truly immense. I strongly urge the developers of Omega to consider ConTeXt with the same (or perhaps even greater) importance than is given to LaTeX. ConTeXt is the wave of the future. The ConTeXt documentation, while thorough, is still a bit obscure so it takes a while to really get into it. Even now I am still more comfortable with LaTeX; as with any major software, ConTeXt certainly takes getting used to. Hopefully someone will publish a "ConTeXt Companion" or "ConTeXt Unbound" to make the transition easier. But for anyone who wants to compare LaTeX and ConTeXt here are a few good resources: The now out-of-print 4TeX5 manual has a good comparison of ConTeXt and LaTeX http://4tex.ntg.nl/4tex5/manual/ LaTeX2ConTeXt.pdf helps in migrating from one to the other: http://berend.gameren.nl/tex/ http://berend.gameren.nl/tex/LaTeX2ConTeXt.pdf Finally, Taco Hoekwater's "Comparing ConTeXT and LaTeX" http://www.ntg.nl/maps/pdf/20_42.pdf Of course Hans Hagen's latest documentation for ConTeXt itself (which is always being updated) is at http://www.pragma-ade.com/ A beginners' help page is at http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/context-help.html Analogous to Lambda, I call ConTeXt for Omega "Gamma", for the third letter in the greek alphabet. To compile Gamma, make sure a recent version of ConTeXt is installed and do the following to make the format file cont-en.fmt: texexec --make --alone --tex=omega en (Hopefully in future versions of ConTeXt the format file will be gamma.fmt, gamma.ofmt, or something similar) To compile a Gamma file, run texexec --tex=omega my file =========Omega Fonts: type-om.tex=============== The font selection scheme in ConTeXt is conceptually simple but practically rather tricky. It's a large cry from NFSS but is much more configurable (making it more tricky). I am embarassed by the amount of time it took me to get my own fonts working smoothly. Fortunately Hans was extremely responsive to all my requests for help and I suspect I'd still be lost in the labyrinth of ConTeXt's font selection machinery of typescripts and typefaces if not for his help and patience. Attached in this mail is type-om.tex which is a set of typescripts which loads omlgc and omarab fonts so they can be used seamlessly with ConTeXt. This file provides a model for setting up your own fonts in Gamma. But be sure to read mfonts.pdf from the ConTeXt documentation. IMPORTANT: you must change \texmf\omega\plain\base\grlccode.tex as follows: \typeout{Greek lccodes...} ===> \message{Greek lccodes...} You will notice that I have set the interlinespace for omarab as 3ex. Can Yannis or anyone else suggest a better value? (I don't use omarab myself so I don't have a feel yet for what the best value would be). =========Language Environments: con-om.tex======== Also attached is con-om.tex which is a BETA port of omega.sty to Gamma. While I have tested con-om.tex and it works fine so far, I am sure I have done some things wrong here. For exampe, the environment definitions use plain old \def whereas in ConTeXt there is a \definestartstop mechanism which is really the right way to do this. I also just replaced \DeclareRobustCommand with \def which may not be the best thing to do (advice needed!). =========Sample File: om-test7.tex================== om-test7.tex is a test Gamma file that works for Latin and the Greek, Arabic-Persian, and Urdu environments, and probably for the rest as well. =========Distribution================== These three files are a gift to the Omega and ConTeXt communities. I hope that eventually type-om.tex will be integrated into the ConTeXt distribution and that con- om.tex will be integrated into the Omega distribution to serve as the basis for a high-level interface to ConTeXt. The first two, especially con-om, need improvement but I hope that they make it easier for potential users of ConTeXt and Omega to get off to a good start and not have to spend as much time as I did getting things set up. Jonas, please feel free to add this stuff to your omega site as well. ===========bugs====================== There are a few areas where ConTeXt and Omega don't interact well. I sent a message to the ConTeXt list which I will forward to the Omega list a little later. ===================================== Thnx 2 Hans Hagen again for his patience and help. As modest as this stuff is, I hope it helps to bring Omega and ConTeXt closer and as a foundation for further improvements by real TeXnicians. Best wishes Idris ========================== Dr. Idris Samawi Hamid Depatment of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80526
om-test7.tex
Description: TeX document
type-om.tex
Description: TeX document
con-om.tex
Description: TeX document
