GOOD IDEAļ¼ On Sun, Oct 9, 2016 at 7:18 PM, Jonas Baggett <jon...@tranquille.ch> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I am new to new to ConTeXt and I was thinking about how to improve > documentation to help users and then make ConTeXt more appealing. Because, > if there is one weak point in my eyes with ConTeXt, it is the lack of > documentation, which is too bad because ConTeXt seems to be really great. > And google search is also a little tricky, since context is a common name. > On the other hand, most of the help I found was on the wiki, the mailing > list, TeX Stack Exchange and some pdf documentations. Sometimes, I also > faced the problem about the documentation being outdated and when I am > trying to find the solution on the internet, I may have a hard time finding > solutions that aren't outdated too. The worse is maybe when a command option > isn't working anymore with not even a warning. > > The basic idea I have is a database of ConTeXt documents, where everyone can > add his own documents. We have also to make it easy to find there insightful > examples in ConTeXt that will help someone to achieve what he is trying to > do. Then users, especially beginners, will less likely be stuck at one point > and looking for hours for a solution and less help will be asked on the > mailing list too. > > Here are the basic concepts about the database : > - When someone adds a document, he can specify the type of the document like > e.g. report, letter, CV, book, etc. Subcategories could be a good idea too, > e.g. letters can have a subcategory called cover letters. Some extra tags > could also be useful, like e.g.: math, luatex, tables, positioning, etc when > there is some use of the preceding, maybe not necessarily essential when the > use is only basic. > - If some extra fonts or modules are needed to be installed in order to make > the example fully work, this could also be specified. > - Search could be done by specifying one or more categories and tags. It > will also be possible to search all the occurrences in the database of a > command with optionally a command parameter. > - It will be like a wiki so that everyone could improve the existing > examples. > - It can be also useful to allow comments, because it is possible that an > example is close to what someone is trying to do, in which case he will look > on the comments hoping that there was already someone who asked there the > question and got answered. > - In order to mitigate the problem with deprecation stuffs after some > language changes, we could have all the commands and their options listed > somewhere in the database, then when a command or command parameter is > getting deprecated, it will be possible to mark it as so and provide some > hints on how to fix it. After that, all the examples that use the deprecated > stuffs will get a warning and hints will be showed about how to fix them. > And since that examples are editable by anyone, there won't be hopefully > very much of outdated documents. > > Here some are possible scenarios about searching in the database : > - Someone is writing a letter and is trying to move one element (e.g. date, > his address, receiver address) in another location without any success so > far. Then he will go to this database, choose letter as category and > positioning as extra tag and launch the search. Maybe he will get about 20 > results, then chances are that some of the found examples will be doing > something close enough to what he's trying to do, so that he could analyse > the source and understand what he needs to do in his case. > - Someone is looking about how to set the background color of a framed box. > Then he will search occurrences of the uses of the \framed command which > have color in their arguments. Then by looking at the found examples, he > will find out that the color is set with the backgroundcolor argument and > that the background argument need to be set to "color" too. > > What do you think about the idea ? I believe this could be a good complement > to the existing ressources. > > Have a nice sunday, > Jonas > ___________________________________________________________________________________ > If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to > the Wiki! > > maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / > 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 : ntg-context@ntg.nl / 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 ___________________________________________________________________________________
