Re: roadmap

[Henning Hraban Ramm <texml@fiee.net>]

Hi Hans, thank you so much!

Am 2018-05-14 um 17:17 schrieb Hans Hagen <j.hagen@xs4all.nl>:

> - Get rid of inconsistencies in the user interface e.g. by introducing new commands with settings.

+1

> - Check what additional features users want (miss) and decide to what extent and with what priority we will put effort in this. We've reached a point where interference prevents more complex extensions.

* Recently I had some difficulties with (foot)notes, you’ll remember the margin notes thread. There are still some things that don’t work/look as I’d like them to, and I hope also others would welcome more flexible/simpler placement options.

* User/list/structure variables: Probably it’s just me, but there are a few difficulties.

* References: see Massimiliano’s question, apparently there are options missing for code before/after the list of pages

* ePub: I got requests for ePubs again and will look into what’s still wrong/difficult. Last time I checked, footnote markers were accumulating in strange places. Maybe some more default constructs could get a representation in export XML, e.g. \bf, \it

* There are a few things missing in image handling - when I wrote my placement macros I needed image size calculations that already exist in ConTeXt but were not easily accessible.

* Would it be possible (or is it already?) to place stuff on layers and let "everything else" run around it? E.g. for half-page images I’m having a hard time using the float placement, while I could simply place images on a layer.

> - Are there reasonable challenges left.

* ePub

* PDF/* (X, A, UA - probably only reasonable with external tools, but it seems like there’s not a lot that’s usable)

* even better error messages - often you get some obscure errors if you just miss a brace or bracket somewhere. I guess that’s a big hurdle for beginners.

* documentation... (sigh) While I’m trying to enhance our wiki and my book on ConTeXt, I often need to search the code base for undocumented options or usage examples, sometimes on stuff that looks simple or would be simple to do in InDesign...

> LuaTeX 1.09:
> - We expect the ffi interface to external libraries to become more stable over time. ConTeXt will not introduce dependencies (what can be done in Lua will happen in Lua) but on the other hand we might put some libraries in the distribution e.g. for database support.

Sounds good. I could use JSON, SQLite and/or MySQL support and some user interface stuff – at the moment my invoicing solution is a mixture of Bash, Python, Lua und ConTeXt, I’m already using a minimal OO library (classy.lua) and was looking into tekui, but got stuck... Maybe I should better look into the ConTeXt web framework as GUI. Or finally finish my (Django based) web shop and write a ConTeXt backend for PDF generation... Anyway.

Some default imaging solution would be nice (GraphicsMagick library).


Greetlings, Hraban
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