Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
Mojca Miklavec wrote: On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 5:46 PM, Andrea Valle wrote: Thanks Aditya Sorry, I have no idea of how things work on a Mac, but it seems strange to hide the entire tex tree simply, the whole usr folder is hidden OK, but when you install Windows, the whole C:\ directory is hidden as well if I recall it correctly. You have to keep in mind that most users should not bother about things under /usr. For the rest, there is Terminal. c: is not hidden, some system paths are semi hidden, i.e. the file manager does not show their content unless explicitely told to do - Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl - ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
I would seem that ConTeXt has a natural market in web developers who are used to writing structured documents for layout engines. Personally, I'd like to see a Drupal module that will ConTeXtify a person's website as a book or magazine for printing. How great would it be to have an automatically updating e-book for print and screen generated off your website's content based on your tags/taxonomy. Just add FortheBook tag to an article, and without one having to do any more, it will appear in the PDF available on the front page of your site. There is a LaTeX module for Drupal, but I haven't tried it. I think such a module would help to whet other web developer's appetite for ConTeXT. Have you looked at http://wiki.contextgarden.net/HTML_and_ConTeXt which explains how Saji converted a wiki to (informl) to pdf using ConTeXt. I do not know about Drupal, but similar thing should work. There is also Pandoc which can convert Markdown syntax to ConTeXt. It can also convert html to markdown, so in principle you can use it as html to context converter. (Of course, with this approach you are limited to only things which markdown can capture). Aditya ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
Thanks Aditya Sorry, I have no idea of how things work on a Mac, but it seems strange to hide the entire tex tree simply, the whole usr folder is hidden Ok, I'll take a look an in case come back to the list Best -a- -- -- Andrea Valle -- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino -- http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ -- http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty (Ken Perlin on noise) ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Andrea Valle wrote: By reading the source :) Joking of course ... but not entirely. Yes, that's an important point. Many times the options I'm searching for are not documented: so, or I'm able to find an example in wiki/mailing list or probably it would be easy to take a look to the sources, I guess. I know it's far from being polite, but really I'd like to have a How-to-find-your-way-thru-the-source Tutorial for total newbie. The first thing that you need to know is the file where a particular command is defined. You can search the source tree on contextgarden; or grep the files in your computer. After a while you will remember which file defines a particular command. On my mac, they are hidden: so, first step, change your visualization preferences thru a googled script form Terminal. Sorry, I have no idea of how things work on a Mac, but it seems strange to hide the entire tex tree. Second, the (in)famous tex tree structure is far from being clear for me. Almost all of ConTeXt files are in $TEXMF/tex/context/base (fonts, are of course a different issue) Third, and most important, how to extract infos from sources? This is the easiest. Most of ConTeXt commands are written in a consistent manner. Hans uses verbose variable names, which makes it easy to read the code. Also in most cases the source files have lot of comments. Aditya ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
Am 2008-03-31 um 17:33 schrieb Aditya Mahajan: How-to-find-your-way-thru-the-source Tutorial for total newbie. The first thing that you need to know is the file where a particular command is defined. You can search the source tree on contextgarden; or grep the files in your computer. After a while you will remember which file defines a particular command. In case someone overread this: You can search the source tree on contextgarden http://source.contextgarden.net/ And besides the wiki pages, a lot of command documentation is in texshow-web: http://texshow.contextgarden.net/ (Even if unfortunately some groups of commands are missing completely.) On my mac, they are hidden: so, first step, change your visualization preferences thru a googled script form Terminal. Sorry, I have no idea of how things work on a Mac, but it seems strange to hide the entire tex tree. MacOS X hides most of its UNIX stuff from a normal user. But you can just e.g. open /usr/ in Terminal and continue to browse in Finder. Third, and most important, how to extract infos from sources? This is the easiest. Most of ConTeXt commands are written in a consistent manner. Hans uses verbose variable names, which makes it easy to read the code. Also in most cases the source files have lot of comments. And I guess the ConTeXt sources are the only place where the Dodo survived. (At least every Dodo would feel at home between all those dodododos.) ;-) Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer) ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 5:46 PM, Andrea Valle wrote: Thanks Aditya Sorry, I have no idea of how things work on a Mac, but it seems strange to hide the entire tex tree simply, the whole usr folder is hidden OK, but when you install Windows, the whole C:\ directory is hidden as well if I recall it correctly. You have to keep in mind that most users should not bother about things under /usr. For the rest, there is Terminal. Mojca ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
Hi Corin, Welcome. I will offer some brief comments, and maybe others will elaborate on things I skip, pass over, or inadequately discuss: On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:01:30 -0600, Corin Royal Drummond [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've long been curious about TeX but it seemed too ossified, No, see the luatex project, developed and supported mostly (though not exclusively) by the ConTeXt community. fragmented, engines: pdfTeX is standard, luaTeX (experimental) will one day be its successor, and xeTeX is is also available for special script needs (an area where luaTeX also shines). Other TeX versions are deprecated or obsolete. In the next three years only luaTeX and xetex will be relavant. formats: ConTeXt and LaTeX. So: you have two/three engines to choose from (depending on your needs) and two formats. inflexible, This is simply not the case. Indeed, I am not aware of any foundation for typography and typesetting that is more flexible than TeX. And you have a variety of options depending on your needs, as I just explained above. and hard to learn. That is true, to an extent. OTOH ConTeXt has a very consistent interface, much more so than LaTeX's (including its package system). Later I discovered LyX and understood implicitly the style based markup idea, and it's power. LyX, now THAT's inflexible ;-) I've always hated things like word, open office, and DTP programs. I'm fine doing the GUI for PhotoShop, but somehow I feel I should be able to just type text, and have it come out all pretty. ConTeXt seems to share that philosophy, so I'm giddy about it. I suppose I should learn InDesign too, but I don't really want to. For structured elements that require automated processing ConTeXt is way ahead of InDesign AKAIK. I've been working my way through the documentation, ConTeXt Garden, and whatever I can find on Google searches. I've worked my way up to making a letter head with my address, a graphic logo, and couple of font switches, and some hanging punctuation. I made another version for my journal with two columns under each section heading. I'm using Scite as my editor, but I haven't set it up anyway special. There is a ConTeXt-enabled version of scite that is distributed by Pragma. Kile didn't seem to like ConTeXt much, and it's command completion facility kept spitting out LaTeX code as I typed. I like Scite as it starts fast, has nice colors, and is easy to get around. See the wiki http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page and search for the text editors page. For what follows, I will make a comment or two, but note the following: 1. There are people here more than happy to help you with any problems you may be experiencing. 2. In general, try to focus on one problem per email subject. 3. When possible, always give the smallest sample context file that illustrates the problem. TexFont doesn't work on Ubuntu. It craps out saying it can't find it's TeX root. Even when I set the FontRoot with the command line switch, it fails to find it's map files. I filed a bug with Ubuntu about it as it seems like some files like the font maps got put in /var/lib. So I'm completely frustrated by the font situation. Don't understand why I can't just point TexFont at my directory of OTF, TTF, and PFB fonts and have it suck up every last glyph and variant like Scribus, InkScape, and InDesign do. It should configure a reasonable set of typescripts, and tell me what's available. All the other TeX fonts should just work out of the box. Why do I have to wrestle so vainly just to get the damn fonts to be available. ConTeXt is extraordinarily flexible when it comes to fonts, and this inevitably involves much user configuration. With luaTeX and mkiv (next generation context) things will become streamlined in ways but you will have to learn to manipulate fonts the context way. There are lots of tutorials out there (see the wiki). AKAIK pdfTeX+mkii (which I presume you are using) has pretty much stabilized so bring your problems here and there is probably an easy fix. About Ubuntu, I know nothing. Make sure you have installed the latest context and are not using an old version. Also, I can't for the life of me figure out how to change typefaces in headers and footers. I can change to italics, or sizes with style=\it\x but have no clue how to switch a header to say the Zaph Chancery caligraphic. I can switch the body font to it, so I'm part way there. Send a separate email illustrating the problem (this one's easy btw: \switchtotypeface, \switchtobodyfont). I'm pretty pissed off about the state of the documentation for ConTeXt. Out of date docs, that were never finished, and full of holes. Actually, given the size of ConTeXt and the number of developers, it's amazing how much documentation there is. Look at the cup as half-full, not half-empty. Small set of MyWay articles, old dead links on the wiki, no
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Corin Royal Drummond wrote:
Hello ConTeXt Users,
I have become obsessed with ConTeXt since I found out about it while
browsing through the TeX related software on my Ubuntu Linux box. I've
been teaching myself web development in XHTML/CSS over the last couple
years, and developed a passion for structured documents that separate
presentation as much as possible. I'm starting to setup Drupal CMS
installations for some friends in preparation for doing web publishing
work for clients. It's been fun to learn, but so frustrating and
difficult for my poor mind.
I've long been curious about TeX but it seemed too ossified, fragmented,
inflexible, and hard to learn. Later I discovered LyX and understood
implicitly the style based markup idea, and it's power. I've always
hated things like word, open office, and DTP programs. I'm fine doing
the GUI for PhotoShop, but somehow I feel I should be able to just type
text, and have it come out all pretty. ConTeXt seems to share that
philosophy, so I'm giddy about it. I suppose I should learn InDesign
too, but I don't really want to. I use a text editor for my web coding
rather than dragging boxes around in DreamWeaver. I like that I can
just cut paste other people's code and learn what they did. GUI
programs are harder to learn in that way since someone has to write a
whole step-by-step tutorial rather than just show you their commented
code.
I'm using Scite as my editor, but I haven't set it up anyway special.
Hans has a relatively good Scite setup on Windows that is probably not
included into standard Scite, and probably not available anywhere as a
separate package either. (If you want, you can take a look at
http://www.pragma-ade.com/context/install/mswincontext.zip. There are
quite some files for better Scite support, you only need to figure out
which files you need. In case that you do that, please share your
experience with others.)
Kile didn't seem to
like ConTeXt much, and it's command completion facility kept spitting
out LaTeX code as I typed. I like Scite as it starts fast, has nice
colors, and is easy to get around.
A few months ago some ConTeXt support has been added to Kile. Maybe
upgrading would help (But I never use Kile, so I cannot say for sure).
TexFont doesn't work on Ubuntu. It craps out saying it can't find it's
TeX root. Even when I set the FontRoot with the command line switch, it
fails to find it's map files. I filed a bug with Ubuntu about it as it
seems like some files like the font maps got put in /var/lib. So I'm
completely frustrated by the font situation. Don't understand why I
can't just point TexFont at my directory of OTF, TTF, and PFB fonts and
have it suck up every last glyph and variant like Scribus, InkScape, and
InDesign do. It should configure a reasonable set of typescripts, and
tell me what's available. All the other TeX fonts should just work out
of the box. Why do I have to wrestle so vainly just to get the damn
fonts to be available.
TeXFont is full of non-heavily-tested-functionality, which means
that it sometimes works on one platform, but fails on the other. I
have tried to use it in past, but then I gave up.
The problem is that even though it might need fixes, it is now
obsolete since the arrival of LuaTeX. I don't want to say that it's
useless, just that Hans probably prefers to spend his time improving
LuaTeX support than keeping that old stuff work.
TexFont is written in Perl - if you have some fixes to suggest (in
form of patches), go ahead.
But I would rather suggest to switch to XeTeX or LuaTeX if you need
more advanced fonts. It will make your life much easier.
Also, I can't for the life of me figure out how to change typefaces in
headers and footers. I can change to italics, or sizes with style=\it\x
but have no clue how to switch a header to say the Zaph Chancery
caligraphic. I can switch the body font to it, so I'm part way there.
Use
style={\switchtobodyfont[...]}
... = the same name size as you use in \setupbodyfont[...]
I'm pretty pissed off about the state of the documentation for ConTeXt.
Out of date docs, that were never finished, and full of holes. Small
set of MyWay articles,
Waiting for others to make new ones ... :)
old dead links on the wiki,
Just send a list of them (if you don't know where they should point)
or simply fix them ... That's why wiki is there for.
no roadmap,
There might be no roadmap written anywhere explicitly, but Hans has a
more clear vision in his head than 95% of any other open-source
developers. The fact that it is not written anywhere (take a look at
mk.pdf on Pragma or LuaTeX roadmap or mplib ideas) doesn't mean that
there is none. Hans's and Taco's conference talks always have
something impressive ideas to show even for those who follow the
development closely.
Most open source programs write a roadmap and
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
Hi Corin, Welcome. I will offer some brief comments, and maybe others will elaborate on things I skip, pass over, or inadequately discuss: Mojca is probably the main point person. Welcome again to ConTeXt and Best wishes Idris Dear Professor Idriss, and the Lovely ConTeXT Community, What a thoughtful and warm response to my late night introductory rant. You've most certainly gained a dedicated new user today. Your restraint and courtesy to my half-considered diatribe is most heartening. Amazingly, you managed to answer alot of questions I wasn't fully aware I was asking. Since I wrote to the list last night, I have continued learning ConTeXt at a frightening clip. Did my first drop caps, indentations, and messed around with setting width and height. I can't remember when my computer has brought me so much fun. I'm beginning to see that there is a fair amount of documentation, but it's sprayed all over and needs some TLC. I think what I'd like to contribute to ConTeXt is some more docs. I'm thinking of doing some web video screencasts (easy on Linux) showing off how to do specific things like Lettrines or multi-line headers, explaining the format of options and parameters, and generally helping people see and appreciate the ConTeXt way. I would seem that ConTeXt has a natural market in web developers who are used to writing structured documents for layout engines. Personally, I'd like to see a Drupal module that will ConTeXtify a person's website as a book or magazine for printing. How great would it be to have an automatically updating e-book for print and screen generated off your website's content based on your tags/taxonomy. Just add FortheBook tag to an article, and without one having to do any more, it will appear in the PDF available on the front page of your site. There is a LaTeX module for Drupal, but I haven't tried it. I think such a module would help to whet other web developer's appetite for ConTeXT. I think one of the joys of ConTeXt for me is that web development just sucks for typography. There are only a handful of fonts one can specify in any document unless you embed them in images (which God told me was a sin). By contrast, with ConTeXt, I feel like a kid in a candy store, with so many things I can do to my text. I nearly had a fit when I got hanging punctuation working. Thanks again for your kind counsel Idriss, I hope I can help you guys out by writing some new docs, and being an evangelist for ConTeXt. Never have I found a piece of software that so deserved wider recognition. I will definitely keep an eye out for Mojca and Luigi. Would be so excited to meet a local ConTeXt user. With deep gratitude, Corin Royal Drummond San Francisco ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
Dnia Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 11:07:42AM -0700, Corin Royal Drummond napisa#322;(a): Dear Professor Idriss, and the Lovely ConTeXT Community, What a thoughtful and warm response to my late night introductory rant. You've most certainly gained a dedicated new user today. Your restraint and courtesy to my half-considered diatribe is most heartening. Amazingly, you managed to answer alot of questions I wasn't fully aware I was asking. Hear, hear! ;) Since I wrote to the list last night, I have continued learning ConTeXt at a frightening clip. Did my first drop caps, indentations, and messed around with setting width and height. I can't remember when my computer has brought me so much fun. Wow... I'm pretty much in the same situation - just can't wait to start using ConTeXt on a more serious basis! The only problem is, that for me writing in LaTeX (or even plain TeX) is waaay faster - I remember most commands etc. I'm beginning to see that there is a fair amount of documentation, but it's sprayed all over and needs some TLC. I think what I'd like to contribute to ConTeXt is some more docs. I'm thinking of doing some web video screencasts (easy on Linux) showing off how to do specific things like Lettrines or multi-line headers, explaining the format of options and parameters, and generally helping people see and appreciate the ConTeXt way. I had the very same plan, but currently I'm very busy. I started a page on the wiki about fonts for beginners but stopped because of poor time management:(. Hope to get to it back again; if anyone wants to help, it'd be great! And presentations/screencasts suck (I have 128 megs of RAM;)). It's better to give sample code. There is a command on ConTeXtgarden (I can't load it in my browser, so I can't check the syntax, but I've used it on the aforementioned page) which shows both the code and the result. I would seem that ConTeXt has a natural market in web developers who are used to writing structured documents for layout engines. Personally, I'd like to see a Drupal module that will ConTeXtify a person's website as a book or magazine for printing. How great would it be to have an automatically updating e-book for print and screen generated off your website's content based on your tags/taxonomy. Just add FortheBook tag to an article, and without one having to do any more, it will appear in the PDF available on the front page of your site. There is a LaTeX module for Drupal, but I haven't tried it. I think such a module would help to whet other web developer's appetite for ConTeXT. I think one of the joys of ConTeXt for me is that web development just sucks for typography. There are only a handful of fonts one can specify in any document unless you embed them in images (which God told me was a sin). By contrast, with ConTeXt, I feel like a kid in a candy store, with so many things I can do to my text. I nearly had a fit when I got hanging punctuation working. Thanks again for your kind counsel Idriss, I hope I can help you guys out by writing some new docs, and being an evangelist for ConTeXt. Never have I found a piece of software that so deserved wider recognition. I will definitely keep an eye out for Mojca and Luigi. Would be so excited to meet a local ConTeXt user. With deep gratitude, Corin Royal Drummond San Francisco Yet another ConTeXt newbie and fan;) -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.faculty.fmcs.amu.edu.pl) Jezus żyje NAPRAWDĘ. A Ty? ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:50:59 +0200, Mojca Miklavec wrote: I don't know the English version of it (there must be one - if anyone knows it, I would be glad to hear it), but we have a nice saying, literally translated as: Farrier's own mare is always barefoot. (In English it's almost exactly the same, except we usually use the shoemaker's children instead of the farrier's mare.) David ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] New Member Introductory Rant
By reading the source :) Joking of course ... but not entirely. Yes, that's an important point. Many times the options I'm searching for are not documented: so, or I'm able to find an example in wiki/ mailing list or probably it would be easy to take a look to the sources, I guess. I know it's far from being polite, but really I'd like to have a How- to-find-your-way-thru-the-source Tutorial for total newbie. On my mac, they are hidden: so, first step, change your visualization preferences thru a googled script form Terminal. Second, the (in) famous tex tree structure is far from being clear for me. Third, and most important, how to extract infos from sources? This is my main (only) frustration with ConTeXt, Just 2c Best -a- -- Andrea Valle -- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino -- http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ -- http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- I did this interview where I just mentioned that I read Foucault. Who doesn't in university, right? I was in this strip club giving this guy a lap dance and all he wanted to do was to discuss Foucault with me. Well, I can stand naked and do my little dance, or I can discuss Foucault, but not at the same time; too much information. (Annabel Chong) -- Andrea Valle -- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino -- http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ -- http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty (Ken Perlin on noise) ___ 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 : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
