On Nov 4, 2005, at 15:49, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
Hi all,
For the next issue of the ntg's Maps journal, Hans and I believe
it would be nice to publish the collected responses to this simple
question:
What do you do with ConTeXT?
I have decided not too long ago to move my book-project form LaTeX to
ConTeXt (it was my second try, the first one I stopped because there
were too many problems). Reason: I dislike how LaTeX output generally
looks (though I found memoir to be pretty good) and after reading the
documentation I liked how ConTeXt looked as an interface.
I think those ideas are generally still correct, but using ConTeXt is
often a wrestling match for me. The documentation is a disaster if you
want to find out how things work other than the few actual examples
given. Going to the source to find out what options there are is not
optimal. E.g. can somebody tell mem how to prevent \textline to take up
so much vertical space (and yes, I tried all the settings)? Secondly,
writing is less conceptual than LaTeX and more visually oriented. That
is a logical consequence of its philosophy and its layout power, but I
really miss a more conceptual approach (as in a LaTeX "letter" class or
"book" class) on top of ConTeXt. Lately, I have also become
disappointed by the non-local nature of things I ran into (e.g. having
a float in an endnote and having the float end up in the vincinity of
the endnote marker in the main text, not in the endnote chapter), which
are things I completely did not expect to happen. I get the feeling
that ConTeXt is running into TeX-as-a-programming-environment
limitations.
I stick to ConTeXt for my book project, but I keep everything else
still in LaTeX (e.g. letters). I still think ConTeXt has the potential
to outclass LaTeX completely, but it is not there yet. For ordinary
non-TeXhackers like me, it is not a smooth ride.
G
_______________________________________________
ntg-context mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
