On Sun, 2011-08-14 at 16:39 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي
حامد wrote:
> Wow, that would be great if we got tens of millions of users to buy the  
> Book :D :D :D

;)

> Well, most people using Linux have some technical facility, so they can  
> configure their own editors.

I don't know about that. That might have been the case in the early part
of the previous decade, but not so any more. Ubuntu changed all that,
with a large portion of its demographic being "regular users". Most of
them are not programmers.

> That is actually one option I'm considering. In any case.

e.g. an appendix for gedit, one for Npp, one for Scite, Gleany,
whatever.

> I did look at gedit, but for the current vision I have for introducing  
> ConTeXt to non-technical folks it does not work.

How so? I use it regularly for ConTeXt code. You just have to use the
LaTeX syntax highlighting, but writing a ConTeXt one should be
straightforward to someone familiar with ConTeXt. The LaTex syntax
highlighting that comes with gedit could be used as a fast starter.

> Actually, I spent months checking for a better candidate than Npp,  
> experimenting with just about everything I could get my hands on. On  
> balance Npp got the best score on all the benchmarks I set. That's not to  
> say I wouldn't prefer something better, but that decision is done, only to  
> be revisited if something really AMAZING happens in the next few months.

I'm not disagreeing with you that Npp might be great for beginnings, I'm
just saying that many beginners can't use it because it isn't available
for their operating system.

> WinEdt would really have been be my ideal choice -- but the lack of  
> unicode, bidi is just a non-starter. TeXWorks has a long way to go, and  
> although I'm a fan of Qt its open-type implementation is buggy; so some  
> Arabic-monospaced fonts don't show up correctly.

It's actually an even worse choice than Npp in the sense that, not only
is it available only for Windows, it's non-free.

> Syntax highlighting is only a small part of what we're doing with Npp.  
> Otherwise, just the user-defined dialog of Npp would be sufficient.  
> Click-and-tag, tooltips ... these make for real user-friendliness.

True enough. I agree that a GUI would be really great.

> Thanks for the criticism and
> 
> Best wishes
> Idris

Take care and good luck with the book! I'll probably get a copy myself.


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