Re: Best version of ConTeXt

["Tom" <Tom@tuxedo-press.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl [mailto:ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl] On
Behalf Of Henning Hraban Ramm
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 5:11 PM
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users
Subject: Re: [NTG-context] Best version of ConTeXt

Am 2010-07-08 um 20:54 schrieb Tom:
> I get very confused by all the different versions.

You asked for the "best version", so we supposed you'd know several.

> For starters, what is Tex
> Live? Is it the full blown Context or is it something else? The TUG  
> site has
> Tex Live 2009 which I assume is a stable version that is distributed  
> on DVDs
> to TUG members. I get the impression that other Context "compilers"  
> for lack
> of a better term exist and that Context Minimals is a stripped down  
> version
> of a more powerful one. How far off track am I?

There are only 2 different versions of ConTeXt, called Mark II and  
Mark IV (MkII, MkIV). They are always distributed together and still  
share a lot of code.
MkII is stable, MkIV is the development version with several enhanced  
features and a completely new font handling.

There are 3 different engines for TeX that work with ConTeXt: pdfTeX,  
XeTeX and LuaTeX. MkIV works only with LuaTeX, MkII with any. Font  
setups (typescripts) differ per engine.

There are several distributions of TeX that contain ConTeXt, the most  
notable are TeX Live (jointly published by most TeX User Groups of the  
world) and MikTeX (Windows only). If you don't need LaTeX, we suggest  
our ConTeXt minimals distribution - at least for MkIV, because it's  
always the most up-to-date one.
"Minimals" is in no way stripped down (even if it was meant to be a  
"bare bones" ConTeXt distro), but contains even several tools and free  
fonts.
Most distributions contain all engines.

MkII ist called by "texexec" (a Ruby script, i.e. you need Ruby  
installed), MkIV ist called by "context" (a Lua script, directly  
executed by LuaTeX).


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

Thank you for being so concise, Hraban. This helps a lot.

Tom Benjey
717-258-9733 voice
717-243-0074 fax
Twitter: @TomBenjey



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