Re: distro info

["Charles P. Schaum" <verbo.solo@sbcglobal.net>]

On Sun, 2008-06-15 at 01:05 +0200, Diego Depaoli wrote:
> Furthermore let me doubt that a simplified installation it's enough to
> persuade new users since ConTeXt requires manuals reading which is
> universally considered a waste of time.

In many cases, the nouveau Linux culture or Win/Mac users may not
necessarily like to RTFMP, (P for Please) but anyone with any long-term
Unix exposure does, because that's how it goes. ConTeXt makes its
manuals far easier to get to than others in many cases.

Linux man pages are lame. Mac man pages are decent because they come
from BSD, but lots of Mac users hardly ever use Terminal. Windows users
wouldn't know a man page if you hit them with one. But even commercial
DTP on Mac and Win has some kind of HTML-based set of manuals/tutorials
that they really encourage people to use.

Once people are beyond your average office suite, they just have to read
manuals or know design. That's why there's tons of stuff out there on
the net. Same goes for web design. So I think that, by the time you get
to ConTeXt, you might have to accept the old RTFMP as a sine qua non.

I find the ConTeXt manuals to be exceptional, and I hope to sit down
soon at least with the main ConTeXt EN manual and mark it up where I
find editorial issues. I started using ConTeXt only recently and already
I was able to do a book mock-up with endpapers, title page, indicia
page, TOC, various front matter, chapters, appropriate page headings,
and so on. Were I trying to use LaTeX or plain (I was seriously
considering Lollipop) I would still be wanking around with it.

So I've found the manuals invaluable. True, maybe something that is both
really slow for beginners and faster for the experienced as an
HTML-based set, either on-line or downloadable, wouldn't be bad to have.
I actually have some of my own ideas for the topology of something like
that. One thing that trips me up is not knowing when some bit of plain
TeX should or should not be used.

In any case, everyone using something TeX-related can benefit from the
TeXbook. I enjoy it thoroughly.

Charles

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