Hello ConTeXist.
I installed ConTeXt minimals until pretty late. Before, I used the
context in the TeXLive. For a long time I really thought that Minimals
are "incomplete" versions of minimal and that there was something more.
I was very pleasantly surprised at how easily Minimals installed and is
very good, it is easy to automatically update the version. MkII I
completely stopped using to create new documents using the MkII and
translate only the old stuff.
I know from experience that newcomers and MkII MKIV confusing and I have
sometimes a problem with incompatibility, because I have long used the MkII.
Personally I would advocate a clear separation of the MkII and MKIV in
the garden and change "minimals" name to the name that is so misleading
- eg directly MarkTeX :-).
Greetings Jaroslav
Dne 12.3.2011 17:20, Procházka Lukáš napsal(a):
Hello,
my personal opinion(s) (some of them very similar to Marco's ones):
1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii?
(Cannot say; I started with MkIV so for me ConTeXt = MkIV.)
2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals?
The word "minimals" is a bit confusing. It implies that there must be
also Ctx "standard" or Ctx "maximal".
Better to be just "ConTeXt"; and if one finds something missing (e.g.
fonts? modules?), he may be directed towards some "extras".
3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers?
4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden
for search engine requests?
The problem is too-many-incomplete (or obsolete) information sources.
Wiki contains many stubs; there are options for commands which are not
explained at all, even not mentioned or demonstrated by an example.
Similar for contextref.pdf - there are many "todo areas", but be it.
But also many command options are not explained at all.
From the user's point, when one has a problem, this means 1) search
the wiki (he may remember that lately he didn't find an answer, but he
should try again, what about if the topic/stub was added/completed?),
2) search the manual (personally, my most favourite source) and 3) to
post a question to the mailing list (fortunately, people here do
answer swiftly and even very "basic" questions are answered patiently).
In my opinion, one information source would be good, a Ctx reference.
It might be divided to several parts (e.g. Fonts, Tables, Document
Structure Elements, Layers and Overlays, Colouring ConTeXt, ConTeXt
and XML...).
It should be decided whether the primary source is to be the wiki or
the Ctx manual (.pdf).
5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?
For LaTeX incomers: it would be good to provide a sample setup
(module?) which would make Ctx generated .pdf looking very closely to
that been generated by LaTeX.
Now, if you see a .pdf document and you are familiar with LaTeX, you
recognize immediately whether or not it was generated by LaTeX (Word's
signature is also unmatchable).
If you create a first document with ConTeXt (moreover when migrating
from LaTeX), you probably won't be satisfied with the default look
(letters too big, heads not bold, spacing before/after heads too
different from LaTeX's; and the LaTeX default document looks very
"symphonic" in my opinion) (but also I can imagine that many Ctx
defaults cannot be changed due to backward compatibility reasons).
The perfect feature of ConTeXt is that all these features may be
systematically altered (often [almost] impossible in LaTeX) but you
must search enough and study (and maybe ask the forum) to get the
result which would fulfil your aesthetic requirements.
----
Treat all above as a personal point of view.
I appreciate all work around Ctx and documenting it; and as an active
programmer (including writing a user reference) I can imagine effort
which must be make to improve a program, to test it and to keep the
documentation up-to-date, including adding description of new features
(and samples for them) and removing the deprecated ones.
Best regards,
Lukas
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry
to the Wiki!
maillist : [email protected] /
http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the
Wiki!
maillist : [email protected] / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________
