Hi everyone,
there has been some talk of updating Joaquín Ataz-López's "A not so short
introduction to ConTeXt Mark IV" book (see (*) for a reminder of some
reasons below), and I'm happy to report that Joaquín has been enthusiastic
in his support for the idea.
(*) Here are some of the reasons why this is seen to be a good idea
-> Mk IV is not equal to LMTX, and thus some updates to reflect
additions / changes / ... are useful.
-> in any large document like ANSS, some typos are inevitable, and they may
as well be fixed
-> (my personal opinion:) Mark II is a historical note, and references to it
could/should be removed from the LMTX community edition.
The above are mostly "local" changes, in that a word, sentence or paragraph
could be added/deleted/modified without changing the overall structure of
the book. But as well as those,
-> would a rearrangement of the order be useful for ConTeXt users, or did
JAL get it exactly right in ANSS?
-> would it be useful to divide some topics into
- knowledge the complete beginner needs right away for the simplest
document
- "more advanced" knowledge for fine-tuning the output
- material for "unusual, complex situations" (I could mention names of
knowledgeable people who ask tricky questions on this very list)
One way to move this project forward would be to come up with a list of
goals, have interested parties debate their merits, create a project plan,
and then find people to do various bits of the work. If someone wants to
take that on, great. Until then, I think it is worthwhile to make
(smaller?) updates as individuals identify a need.
While I decided to do the initial work to get this project underway, I
don't pretend to have the knowledge to do many of the above changes. Nor
do I pretend to be someone who can be overall arbiter of what changes
should be made (although I will have my opinions, just like anyone else).
I have created a git repository
https://codeberg.org/anss-ce/ANSS-CE
where I have done my initial modest changes to the "en" version
-> files are now named .tex, not .mkiv
-> a new license file (after some discussions with JAL)
-> a new preface
-> various fairly minor typographical changes, some tiny errors fixed, ...
-> changed to compile.sh to make compiling more efficient.
I think for this project to move along at a reasonable rate, interested
people can help in various ways:
-> clone the repository, make changes, submit pull requests
-> become a joint owner of the git repository, to help approve PRs
-> for the git-averse, raise "issues" on the project repository
-> if all else fails, email this list or a repository owner
Here are some small things to be done, should anyone wish to get their feet
wet:
-> remove Mark II discussions
-> find and fix typos
-> change explanations of command options that are different in LMTX
-> add explanations of command options where JAL couldn't discover their
function
-> there are two French versions:
- why?
- is there material in there which should be added to ANSS-CE?
= If so, would the copyright holder(s) be OK with that?
-> update the translations with improvements in the English version.
Speaking of copyright, to avoid future headaches, it is probably best to
not submit non-trivial amounts if your employer either owns every one of
your thoughts, or thinks they own your thoughts.
Thanks already go to Max Chernoff for setting up a system which will
automagically update the PDFs when changes are made. And thanks to
Wolfgang Schuster for helping me understand how to get the correct page
information into the PDF page labels. (And Henning Hraban Ramm, for
suggesting Codeberg, which keeps the project from being at the mercy of
a certain mega-corporation whose name won't be mentioned.)
Did anyone read all the way down to here?
Jim
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