Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Well, I am a beginner. I have just lost 2 hours trying to do something which ought to be simple. Perhaps now I have spent 10's of hours working at my understanding, yet still I have to look up the simplest essentials, often. And I think knowing what kind of things it is, and where one might look are necessary lubricants for this process. I think you probably cannot have too many (documented) examples. Things which are very obvious to some , are not so obvious to others. And if too much has to be done by trial and error then everything is very slow... Very very slow. For me, there is too much that is cryptic in the Wiki. Often I read the entry and am no wiser. Each word is well formed, but there is no mental model emerging. Maybe a wiki is good place for archiving, curating and exchanging tips, but just not so good for learning from scratch. The 'Starting with Context' pdf I find very good, but for later work all kinds of things are 'bad style', 'deprecated' etc. So maybe a way in to thinking about what to do is to consider how the newer user might get a handle on what Context is really for, and why one might prefer it to manually typesetting documents... Kind regards Ian 2011/3/16 Vedran Miletić riva...@gmail.com: 2011/3/14 Carlos Breton Besnier breton.car...@gmail.com 2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I am no-developer, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too). Well, with TeX Live 2010 it's very simple to use MkII with both pdfTeX and XeTeX. Hopefully, some future version of TeX Live (2011?) will offer the same for MkIV. Script is already there, it's just not integrated with TeXworks in TeX Live yet. Regards, Vedran Miletić ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too). ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I am no-developer, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too). ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
2011/3/14 Carlos Breton Besnier breton.car...@gmail.com 2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I am no-developer, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too). Well, with TeX Live 2010 it's very simple to use MkII with both pdfTeX and XeTeX. Hopefully, some future version of TeX Live (2011?) will offer the same for MkIV. Script is already there, it's just not integrated with TeXworks in TeX Live yet. Regards, Vedran Miletić ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Yes, I see that would be a non-trivial problem. Maybe as a stop-gap some ConTeXt files could be provided which at least roughly emulate a few standard LaTeX styles? -Alasdair On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Aditya Mahajan adit...@umich.edu wrote: On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, Alasdair McAndrew wrote: For example. the LaTeX ieee.sty is available at http://delphiwww.cern.ch/delphi$www/private/det/stc/ieee94/mp/ieee.styand ACM styles at http://www.acm.org/publications/latex_style/. How hard would it be to emulate these in ConTeXt? The hard part is figuring out the values (font size, spaces after sections, etc) from the LaTeX code. It is difficult to look at http://mirror.hmc.edu/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/IEEEtran.cls and figure out what is the title size for a 10pt document, or how much space should come between the author block and the start of the two column text, etc. Reverse engineering these values is no fun. That is why I am saying that an *exact and complete* spec is needed. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___ -- Blog: http://amca01.wordpress.com Web: http://bit.ly/Alasdair Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alasdair.mcandrew ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Am 2011-03-14 um 07:33 schrieb Alasdair McAndrew: Yes, I see that would be a non-trivial problem. Maybe as a stop-gap some ConTeXt files could be provided which at least roughly emulate a few standard LaTeX styles? Again: We senior ConTeXt users won’t look thoroughly at a few standard LaTeX styles just to copy their look for a few switchers. We don’t need them. We design our own styles after our needs. We don’t stick to a few standard styles. It’s ConTeXt, not LaTeX. If you come up with specifications, we can help you implementing them. Otherwise consider paying one of us for doing annoying, unnecessary work. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Hi, On 03/13/2011 12:04 AM, Pontus Lurcock wrote: On Sat 12 Mar 2011, C. wrote: 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? Because they already have it in miktex, texlive. What they don't know is that these versions are outdated and due to the heavy development pretty far behind. Plus, it should say Context Standalone because that is what it is. I think Context Standalone would be a good name: as I understand it, minimals refers to the fact that it doesn't include other TeX formats and associated baggage; standalone conveys the same idea with less ambiguity, and hints at the fact that it won't interfere with your system's package manager. I agree, that sounds like a good name. Mojca, this does not need much more initial work than fixing the wiki pages, right? Best wishes, Taco ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
2011/3/14 Aditya Mahajan adit...@umich.edu: The hard part is figuring out the values (font size, spaces after sections, etc) from the LaTeX code. It is difficult to look at http://mirror.hmc.edu/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/IEEEtran.cls and figure out what is the title size for a 10pt document, or how much space should come between the author block and the start of the two column text, etc. Erm - is that really needed? Today a typical journal's workflow should accept articles in LaTeX _markup_, convert that to XML and feed it to an XML formatter (which may well use TeX) eventually. I see ConTeXt's role there as the XML formatter. Or it could digest LaTeX markup - but then it would need more than just the layout. Best Martin ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On 2011-03-13 23:12:36, Aditya Mahajan wrote: On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, Alasdair McAndrew wrote: Speaking as a raw ConTeXt beginner, I would find it very helpful to have a library of different styles: LaTeX, journal, conference and book styles. Although all the information is probably there, it is very scattered around though manuals, the wiki, and other documents, and so is in consequence not always easy to find. Why don't you create a wiki page with the **exact** specifications. Then others can write the ConTeXt code to show how to achieve that specification. We can perhaps have a cookbook section on the wiki, which can use these specification as exercise. +1, best idea so far. Not only regarding latex-specific commonplaces but for typographical tasks in general (along the lines of “how I implemented Bringhurst’s chapter enumeration” c.). Would it suffice to just create another wiki namespace like the command reference has? (Entries should have a date stamp and state the context version they were written for.) Philipp Without the exact specification, it is very difficult to understand what a journal style or a book style means. Not all journals and books have the same style. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___ -- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments pgpN2kfvuusaG.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
FWIW, specifications of standard LaTeX styles can be found herehttp://www.tug.org/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/doc/latex/base/classes.pdf. It's a closely written 66 page document. -Alasdair On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Martin Schröder mar...@oneiros.de wrote: 2011/3/14 Aditya Mahajan adit...@umich.edu: The hard part is figuring out the values (font size, spaces after sections, etc) from the LaTeX code. It is difficult to look at http://mirror.hmc.edu/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/IEEEtran.clsand figure out what is the title size for a 10pt document, or how much space should come between the author block and the start of the two column text, etc. Erm - is that really needed? Today a typical journal's workflow should accept articles in LaTeX _markup_, convert that to XML and feed it to an XML formatter (which may well use TeX) eventually. I see ConTeXt's role there as the XML formatter. Or it could digest LaTeX markup - but then it would need more than just the layout. Best Martin ___ 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 ___ -- Blog: http://amca01.wordpress.com Web: http://bit.ly/Alasdair Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alasdair.mcandrew ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I am no-developer, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too). ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 08:46, Taco Hoekwater wrote: Mojca, this does not need much more initial work than fixing the wiki pages, right? Except that wiki pages are in a really horrible shape when it comes to Installation pages. I bet that 90% of pages are outdated with wrong information about how to break TeX Live 2009 with the latest ConTeXt MKIV version, how to break MikTeX 2.7 by creating a couple of .bat files to run the latest ConTeXt, how to install on SuSE from 2007, etc. I'm just not sure what and where to start fixing anything unless I create a full list of outdated pages, create a full backup, delete everything and write everything from scratch. If anyone has the slightest idea where to start, please do it. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 15:26, Mojca Miklavec mojca.miklavec.li...@gmail.com wrote: Except that wiki pages are in a really horrible shape when it comes to Installation pages. [...] If anyone has the slightest idea where to start, please do it. FWIW, I updated the Ubuntu pages last week. The OS X pages don't seem to be out of date. mathew ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:35:54 -0800 Henry House hajho...@hajhouse.org wrote: I strongly agree that sample set-up code (ideally well-commented so that it also serves as a tutorial of sorts) to reproduce the style of LaTeX would be helpful. The appearance of LaTeX documents isn't perfect but it produces reasonably high-quality results suitable for complex technical documents right out of the box of the box without any tweaking, whereas ConTeXt requires (at least it did for me) some trouble to set it up for the first time. To some extent this is not because of the merit of the LaTeX design itself but the fact that it is familiar and therefore highly readable to someone used to reading it. It is also the point of departure for a LaTeX user wanting to convert to using ConTeXt; hence, i would imagine many such people would prefer to tweak a LaTeX-like document appearance to better suit their needs rather than starting with something quite different. Certainly, this was the case for me; being basically satisfied with my LaTeX documents but wanting more control and the option to use the advanced features of ConTeXt. Having sample set-up code that emulated LaTeX would have eased the initial transition for me. Pardon my French, but this thread is getting less and less useful, probably because it addresses too many issues at a time. It is rapidly degenerating from a how to restructure the garden into a things I wish others would do so my life becomes easier. If someone says I added a section to the wiki which explains which ConTeXt settings will give a document equivalent to LaTeX XXX class, fine - I would consider this superfluous, but it may help some people. But even strongly agreeing that somebody else should write a tutorial isn't getting any work done. And the assumption that most or all ConTeXt users are, at their heart, LaTeX renegades is not true, I think. Many advanced users haven't used LaTeX ever or in a long time and wouldn't want to waste their time on learning it just for the sake of such a comparison. Sorry for being so blunt, but I think this will be more helpful if we stay focussed. Thomas ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011, Henry House wrote: Procházka Lukáš wrote: [...] 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). I don't think that we should try to copy that style. 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. I strongly agree that sample set-up code (ideally well-commented so that it also serves as a tutorial of sorts) to reproduce the style of LaTeX would be helpful. A better idea will be to show how to create ConTeXt style files for well defined styles e.g., style for some journal, say AMS or IEEE, or even the style of LaTeX (if someone can point out its exact specification) The appearance of LaTeX documents isn't perfect but it produces reasonably high-quality results suitable for complex technical documents right out of the box of the box without any tweaking, whereas ConTeXt requires (at least it did for me) some trouble to set it up for the first time. To some extent this is not because of the merit of the LaTeX design itself but the fact that it is familiar and therefore highly readable to someone used to reading it. It is also the point of departure for a LaTeX user wanting to convert to using ConTeXt; hence, i would imagine many such people would prefer to tweak a LaTeX-like document appearance to better suit their needs rather than starting with something quite different. Certainly, this was the case for me; being basically satisfied with my LaTeX documents but wanting more control and the option to use the advanced features of ConTeXt. Having sample set-up code that emulated LaTeX would have eased the initial transition for me. I agree, partially. One of the difficulties in getting a good design with ConTeXt is that you should know what a good design is! It you have a pre-specified style guideline, then it is easy to reproduce it in ConTeXt. If not, you can be stuck up experimenting whether you the space above a section be twice as big the space below it or the other way round. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Speaking as a raw ConTeXt beginner, I would find it very helpful to have a library of different styles: LaTeX, journal, conference and book styles. Although all the information is probably there, it is very scattered around though manuals, the wiki, and other documents, and so is in consequence not always easy to find. cheers, Alasdair On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 7:34 AM, Aditya Mahajan adit...@umich.edu wrote: On Sat, 12 Mar 2011, Henry House wrote: Procházka Lukáš wrote: [...] 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). I don't think that we should try to copy that style. 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. I strongly agree that sample set-up code (ideally well-commented so that it also serves as a tutorial of sorts) to reproduce the style of LaTeX would be helpful. A better idea will be to show how to create ConTeXt style files for well defined styles e.g., style for some journal, say AMS or IEEE, or even the style of LaTeX (if someone can point out its exact specification) The appearance of LaTeX documents isn't perfect but it produces reasonably high-quality results suitable for complex technical documents right out of the box of the box without any tweaking, whereas ConTeXt requires (at least it did for me) some trouble to set it up for the first time. To some extent this is not because of the merit of the LaTeX design itself but the fact that it is familiar and therefore highly readable to someone used to reading it. It is also the point of departure for a LaTeX user wanting to convert to using ConTeXt; hence, i would imagine many such people would prefer to tweak a LaTeX-like document appearance to better suit their needs rather than starting with something quite different. Certainly, this was the case for me; being basically satisfied with my LaTeX documents but wanting more control and the option to use the advanced features of ConTeXt. Having sample set-up code that emulated LaTeX would have eased the initial transition for me. I agree, partially. One of the difficulties in getting a good design with ConTeXt is that you should know what a good design is! It you have a pre-specified style guideline, then it is easy to reproduce it in ConTeXt. If not, you can be stuck up experimenting whether you the space above a section be twice as big the space below it or the other way round. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___ -- Blog: http://amca01.wordpress.com Web: http://bit.ly/Alasdair Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alasdair.mcandrew ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, Alasdair McAndrew wrote: Speaking as a raw ConTeXt beginner, I would find it very helpful to have a library of different styles: LaTeX, journal, conference and book styles. Although all the information is probably there, it is very scattered around though manuals, the wiki, and other documents, and so is in consequence not always easy to find. Why don't you create a wiki page with the **exact** specifications. Then others can write the ConTeXt code to show how to achieve that specification. We can perhaps have a cookbook section on the wiki, which can use these specification as exercises. Without the exact specification, it is very difficult to understand what a journal style or a book style means. Not all journals and books have the same style. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 19:07, Alasdair McAndrew amc...@gmail.com wrote: Speaking as a raw ConTeXt beginner, I would find it very helpful to have a library of different styles: LaTeX, journal, conference and book styles. This is what I've been setting out to do, build a set of examples. So far I've got a custom font example (posted for comment last week) and a personal letter template. I looked at the letter package, but that's far too general. I wanted something simple and self-contained that I could take and modify, not a framework. So yes, a set of examples of layouts is exactly what I would be likely to use myself. mathew ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
For example. the LaTeX ieee.sty is available at http://delphiwww.cern.ch/delphi$www/private/det/stc/ieee94/mp/ieee.sty and ACM styles at http://www.acm.org/publications/latex_style/. How hard would it be to emulate these in ConTeXt? -Alasdair On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 2:32 PM, mathew m...@pobox.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 19:07, Alasdair McAndrew amc...@gmail.com wrote: Speaking as a raw ConTeXt beginner, I would find it very helpful to have a library of different styles: LaTeX, journal, conference and book styles. This is what I've been setting out to do, build a set of examples. So far I've got a custom font example (posted for comment last week) and a personal letter template. I looked at the letter package, but that's far too general. I wanted something simple and self-contained that I could take and modify, not a framework. So yes, a set of examples of layouts is exactly what I would be likely to use myself. mathew ___ 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 ___ -- Blog: http://amca01.wordpress.com Web: http://bit.ly/Alasdair Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alasdair.mcandrew ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, Alasdair McAndrew wrote: For example. the LaTeX ieee.sty is available at http://delphiwww.cern.ch/delphi$www/private/det/stc/ieee94/mp/ieee.sty and ACM styles at http://www.acm.org/publications/latex_style/. How hard would it be to emulate these in ConTeXt? The hard part is figuring out the values (font size, spaces after sections, etc) from the LaTeX code. It is difficult to look at http://mirror.hmc.edu/ctan/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/IEEEtran.cls and figure out what is the title size for a 10pt document, or how much space should come between the author block and the start of the two column text, etc. Reverse engineering these values is no fun. That is why I am saying that an *exact and complete* spec is needed. 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
[NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? 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? 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? Especially answers from new users to the first three points would be helpful to answer the fifth point I guess. In general I find it difficult to differentiate between mkiv and mkii related information in the wiki. How could we better structure the wiki to make it easier for the reader? Disambiguation pages, mkiv/mkii sections, independent pages with mkiv/mkii in headerline? Just my 2 cents on this: difficult, because you won't be able to make everybody happy. Every now and then, I see a new user on the list who asks about installing mkiv and doesn't realize that it is not really something which you have to install additionally. We shouldn't scare those users because in so many cases, mkii and mkiv are exactly identical, so that would be an arguments against a too stric separation. I understand the problem. Having said that, pages like Using Mark IV or Install Mark IV should be renamed to installing/using context. Maybe it would help to include a little box important things to know on the installation page and explain shortly that for historical reasons mkii and mkiv are distributed together and that the former is regarded deprecated. Maybe link to a new page: Differences between miiv/mkii and how both are invoked (context vs. texexec). Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. But I recall it was also the name The ConTeXt MINIMAL distribution that kept me. The name minimal somehow suggested something incomplete or minor to me. It took me a while to figure out that the minimals is actually more than you get from TexLive. Therefore, I would suggest leaving out minimal and advertise the superior instead. But of course you're also right that it's frustrating for users if they can't find relevant information for the areas where the two differ. As long as mkiv hasn't settled, this is not easy... In deed. I guess this has most relevance for people new to context, especially those who know latex already and are used to find help easily. We should add criterium=cite and criterium=text to the Wiki (Bibliography MKIV page: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography_mkiv). You are of course right, but I assume Hans is working on bibliographies right now (he promised to finish something which I need for a project in March, so that leaves him another two weeks ;-), so we should maybe wait a bit. OK, fine. I'm curious what new feature this will bring to us! criterium=cite should work as well, but doesn't right now. In the beginning it was not clear to me, that http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography refers to the MKII implementation of Taco. Therefore, I would suggest to rename Bibliography to Bibliography_mkii and create an alias Bibliography that redirects to Bibliography_mkiv instead. In the wiki pages Bibliography_mkiv and Bibliography_mkii the first sentence should state that the page is related to mkii/mkiv only and link to the other page. Do you think this is reasonable? I had begun rewriting the page. There is now http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliographies which links to the other pages, and which is linked to on the front page. But another context-related project kept me away from this and I never finished this, so fell free to shuffle and rewrite things! I see. I was not aware of this page. I usually find information on the wiki by searching for: site:wiki.contextgarden.net placepublications. So if there are actually disambiguation pages for mkiv/mkii it makes sense to include mkiv/mkii on both pages (not just one). I would like to add a section on customising bibstyle files and add space for sharing reference styles of different journals. What do you think? Again, that's a very good idea, but we should maybe wait just a bit till the dust settles a bit. All right. Best, Florian ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On 2011-03-12 Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de wrote: Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? Because the old manuals only mention mkii and many things have changed in mkiv and don't work in mkii. It is not easy for beginners to choose between mkii and mkiv. And many are not aware of the two different (and incompatible) versions and mix them up. 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? First: Users like to install software using the package management system. Installing software manually is considered evil. For software that is updated frequently usually ppa links are provided for the repository. Second: You mentioned it already. Users tend to install »maximals«, not minimals, they don't like rectricted versions if you can get the whole. ;) 3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers? Make it clear that the minimals are the standard way of using ConTeXt, not TeXlive when they want an up-to-date ConTeXt distribution. A clear advise for mkiv and contra mkii. mkiv is the way to go in the future. 4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden for search engine requests? I don't see a problem there (but still, maybe other people have). Searching the mailing list, the garden or google for context + pragma usually points to the right direction. 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? Provide examples using the described features, so they have a point to start from. This is solved in a good way in the pdf documents, not really on the wiki. I understand the problem. Having said that, pages like Using Mark IV or Install Mark IV should be renamed to installing/using context. ACK Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. But I recall it was also the name The ConTeXt MINIMAL distribution that kept me. The name minimal somehow suggested something incomplete or minor to me. It took me a while to figure out that the minimals is actually more than you get from TexLive. Therefore, I would suggest leaving out minimal and advertise the superior instead. Very true. But it's an established name, I don't believe that it's likely to be changed. Marco ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 14:05, Marco wrote: On 2011-03-12 Florian Wobbe wrote: Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. But I recall it was also the name The ConTeXt MINIMAL distribution that kept me. The name minimal somehow suggested something incomplete or minor to me. It took me a while to figure out that the minimals is actually more than you get from TexLive. Therefore, I would suggest leaving out minimal and advertise the superior instead. Interesting point :) Very true. But it's an established name, I don't believe that it's likely to be changed. Well, I have been warned several times that we should change the name. I'm procrastinating for over a year already to finish and release a new version (that will be even more minimal, but with more optional fonts etc.) on the new server. It would be an option to rename it to The ConTeXt Distribution, but the pet name minimals will probably stay :) 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
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 : 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
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 : 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
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Hello, I recently started using context. I migrated from latex to xelatex to context. Mainly because of the better font support. I now value context also for its superior abilities. I feel that I can do more stuff without the use of \usepackage for this, \usepackage for that. When I read the documentation, I get the feeling that a lot of thoughts went into the options that are presented but it's still easy to customize (if you know how to do it :D) Here is my input to your questions. 1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? The difference is not well explained. Also, mkii (which I don't use) sounds like the old version. When I first read about context, it was like well, we have this and that (mkii and mkiv) but it should say we have mkii, [insert here: what can it do, for what users is it recommended, pros/cons] and mkiv [insert info]. If you are not sure what to use, then you should use mkiv, because that is the future. Or something like that. 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? Because they already have it in miktex, texlive. What they don't know is that these versions are outdated and due to the heavy development pretty far behind. Plus, it should say Context Standalone because that is what it is. 3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers? I for one would welcome to see more guides like the titles guide. Nicely commented and explained code, result as picture. For better structure it would be an option to use code blocks that can be hidden, with a small [+] in front that you can click to see the code. 4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden for search engine requests? I read the manual section, if that does not answer it, I google what I want context. Most of the time that takes me to the mail archive. 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I don't know. Maybe that helps. Christian -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Florian Wobbe [mailto:florian.wo...@awi.de] Gesendet: Samstag, 12. März 2011 13:21 An: mailing list for ConTeXt users Betreff: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden? Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out: 1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? 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? 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? Especially answers from new users to the first three points would be helpful to answer the fifth point I guess. In general I find it difficult to differentiate between mkiv and mkii related information in the wiki. How could we better structure the wiki to make it easier for the reader? Disambiguation pages, mkiv/mkii sections, independent pages with mkiv/mkii in headerline? Just my 2 cents on this: difficult, because you won't be able to make everybody happy. Every now and then, I see a new user on the list who asks about installing mkiv and doesn't realize that it is not really something which you have to install additionally. We shouldn't scare those users because in so many cases, mkii and mkiv are exactly identical, so that would be an arguments against a too stric separation. I understand the problem. Having said that, pages like Using Mark IV or Install Mark IV should be renamed to installing/using context. Maybe it would help to include a little box important things to know on the installation page and explain shortly that for historical reasons mkii and mkiv are distributed together and that the former is regarded deprecated. Maybe link to a new page: Differences between miiv/mkii and how both are invoked (context vs. texexec). Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. But I recall it was also the name The ConTeXt MINIMAL distribution that kept me. The name minimal somehow suggested something incomplete or minor to me. It took me a while to figure out that the minimals is actually more than you get from TexLive. Therefore, I would suggest leaving out minimal and advertise the superior instead. But of course you're also right that it's frustrating for users if they can't find relevant information for the areas where the two differ. As long as mkiv hasn't settled, this is not easy... In deed. I guess this has most relevance for people new to context, especially those who know latex already and are used to find help easily. We should add criterium=cite and criterium=text to the Wiki (Bibliography MKIV page: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography_mkiv). You are of course right, but I assume Hans is working on bibliographies right now (he promised to finish
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat 12 Mar 2011, C. wrote: 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? Because they already have it in miktex, texlive. What they don't know is that these versions are outdated and due to the heavy development pretty far behind. Plus, it should say Context Standalone because that is what it is. I think Context Standalone would be a good name: as I understand it, minimals refers to the fact that it doesn't include other TeX formats and associated baggage; standalone conveys the same idea with less ambiguity, and hints at the fact that it won't interfere with your system's package manager. 3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers? I for one would welcome to see more guides like the titles guide. Agreed. I've been learning Python matplotlib at the same time as ConTeXt, and find that the quickest way is to pick an example plot from the (extensive) gallery that looks similar to what I want, then progressively modify the source code into what I need. A similar collection of common use-cases for ConTeXt would be great for beginners, I think. 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I don't know. Someone above suggested packaging layouts to approximate the standard LaTeX look, and I too think that this would help. Not that I find the standard LaTeX look very pretty, but familiarity is a powerful force... Pont ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
Procházka Lukáš wrote: [...] 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. I strongly agree that sample set-up code (ideally well-commented so that it also serves as a tutorial of sorts) to reproduce the style of LaTeX would be helpful. The appearance of LaTeX documents isn't perfect but it produces reasonably high-quality results suitable for complex technical documents right out of the box of the box without any tweaking, whereas ConTeXt requires (at least it did for me) some trouble to set it up for the first time. To some extent this is not because of the merit of the LaTeX design itself but the fact that it is familiar and therefore highly readable to someone used to reading it. It is also the point of departure for a LaTeX user wanting to convert to using ConTeXt; hence, i would imagine many such people would prefer to tweak a LaTeX-like document appearance to better suit their needs rather than starting with something quite different. Certainly, this was the case for me; being basically satisfied with my LaTeX documents but wanting more control and the option to use the advanced features of ConTeXt. Having sample set-up code that emulated LaTeX would have eased the initial transition for me. ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 06:21, Florian Wobbe florian.wo...@awi.de wrote: Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. My experience on Ubuntu is that if you install the ConTeXt minimals in your path, they break a bunch of stuff from TeXLive, such as pdfcrop. I ended up writing my own pdfcrop because I couldn't work out how to get the one from my distribution working at the same time as the ConTeXt minimals. I'd have gone back to my distro's copy of ConTeXt, if it wasn't for the fact that it dates back to 2009 and I'd already hit a bug in it that's fixed in the minimals. mathew -- URL:http://www.pobox.com/~meta/ ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat 12 Mar 2011, mathew wrote: My experience on Ubuntu is that if you install the ConTeXt minimals in your path, they break a bunch of stuff from TeXLive, such as pdfcrop. I have the minimals installed but with no automatic setup in .bashrc or similar. So when I need to run ConTeXt, I fire up a new terminal and explicitly ‘source /path/to/minimals/context/tex/setuptex’ before doing anything else. Anything I run in a different terminal just gets the standard paths for the system's TeXLive installation. Pont ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 6:03 AM, Pontus Lurcock p...@talvi.net wrote: On Sat 12 Mar 2011, mathew wrote: My experience on Ubuntu is that if you install the ConTeXt minimals in your path, they break a bunch of stuff from TeXLive, such as pdfcrop. I have the minimals installed but with no automatic setup in .bashrc or similar. So when I need to run ConTeXt, I fire up a new terminal and explicitly ‘source /path/to/minimals/context/tex/setuptex’ before doing anything else. Anything I run in a different terminal just gets the standard paths for the system's TeXLive installation. this is the right way to work with minimals (in linux is easy than windows). -- luigi ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 21:08, C. meta...@gmx.de wrote: Hello, I recently started using context. I migrated from latex to xelatex to context. Mainly because of the better font support. I now value context also for its superior abilities. I feel that I can do more stuff without the use of \usepackage for this, \usepackage for that. When I read the documentation, I get the feeling that a lot of thoughts went into the options that are presented but it's still easy to customize (if you know how to do it :D) Here is my input to your questions. 1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? The difference is not well explained. Also, mkii (which I don't use) sounds like the old version. When I first read about context, it was like well, we have this and that (mkii and mkiv) but it should say we have mkii, [insert here: what can it do, for what users is it recommended, pros/cons] and mkiv [insert info]. If you are not sure what to use, then you should use mkiv, because that is the future. Or something like that. For me I don't care mkii. I use only mkiv. It's better to separate completely mkii from mkiv distribution. Yes, I see, in this case there is some work more for ConTeXt team. 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? Because they already have it in miktex, texlive. What they don't know is that these versions are outdated and due to the heavy development pretty far behind. Plus, it should say Context Standalone because that is what it is. Yes, agreed ! mkii should be named ConTeXt Legacy ? ___ 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 ___
Re: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?
On 03/13/2011 12:35 AM, Henry House wrote: Procházka Lukáš wrote: [...] 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. I strongly agree that sample set-up code (ideally well-commented so that it also serves as a tutorial of sorts) to reproduce the style of LaTeX would be helpful. The appearance of LaTeX documents isn't perfect but it produces reasonably high-quality results suitable for complex technical documents right out of the box of the box without any tweaking, whereas ConTeXt requires (at least it did for me) some trouble to set it up for the first time. First, let me say that I don't agree that the default LaTeX appearance is high-quality at all. To me, it looks like crap, and IIRC Lamport actually designed it 'ugly' with to encourage people to create something better looking themselves. Of course most people don't bother (which is typical and he could have seen that coming) but still... The same applies to the default context setup: it is also too ugly to be used for real world documents, and nevertheless many people leave it as is. This means that (for both LaTeX and ConTeXt) the defaults cannot be changed any more because of portability problems in existing documents. But nothing is to stop anybody from creating a different class file for LaTeX or a different module/environment for ConTeXt that produces something 'better'. So, if the intent is to lure people away from LaTeX, why not create a set of environment files to mimic LaTeX's article/book/report and upload them to the garden? Best wishes, Taco ___ 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 ___
