Hi all, With the new "ConTeXt LMTX an Excursion” manual out and also the recent Hraban’s "Drucksachen gestalten mit ConTeXt und LuaMetaTeX" on my desk it was high time to update my 10+ years old ConTeXt setup.
In 2015 Willi Egger had helped me install the system and he also prepared conversions form my LaTeX office stationary designs to versions of it in ConTeXt plus some other custom applications. Over the years I had modified some things, tentatively hacking my way through the code that I more or less understood but it had slowly grown into a spaghetti of commands that were partially revoking each other. The new manuals made me keen to try out the features that I can now read about. Since no one near me is a TeX user at all I was a bit hesitant to try to update but I went ahead, first doing it on an older laptop so none of my every day office TeX work would suddenly come crashing to a halt. I used ChatGPT to figure out all that was needed and I was pleasantly surprised that it worked well. Next I made use of the summer days (most people I communicate with for work are on vacation so nobody bothered me) to repeat the process on the laptop that I use every day and this was also a success. Meanwhile, going through all these steps, I ‘rediscovered’ where TeX is actually residing on the HD, where my personal font files are hiding and what the ConTeXt setup files in the “/user” folder are doing exactly. Because I would easily forget these “behind the editor / compiler / viewer curtain” machinations, I also set out to write a 12 pages long personal notebook / manual describing all these things, step by step, so that in the future it will be easy to upgrade. Until now I’d always used TextMate for writing / editing / compiling my ConTeXt files but in the latest manual by Willi Egger / ConTeXt Group I see that Visual Studio Code is suggested instead. I downloaded and installed this one as well. I looked for guidance and on this page I found a little bit of info: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Input_and_compilation/Text_editors/Visual_Studio_Code but it did not specify how to install it for the Mac exactly. Luckily ChatGPT gave me a step by step guidance again including writing s .json code that works on my machine for building and viewing. From the wiki page I could not understand what exactly the VSIX would do since I am not really very tech savvy but I do like the idea of ’syntax highlighting’ and a color check on matching of braces and brackets so ChatGPT was kind enough to write the code for that, run tests of it in the background on copies of my setup and instruct me how and where to install this addition. So I’m happy that I can now actually try out some of the code that’s shared here! I hope my post is not too annoying for the readers here. I am aware it’s pretty low IQ stuff for most of you ;-) Happy summer day! Frans
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