Re: docs for beginners

[Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de>]

Hans Hagen writes:
> At 10:21 AM 12/21/2001 -0600, Bill McClain wrote:
> >I am a beginner in the TeX and ConTeXt world, and am of course dazed and
> >confused. Before asking questions, I wanted to make sure I have all the
> >docs in English that I should.
> >
> >My initial installation was from SuSE 7.2; since then I have downloaded
> >newer versions (including a recent beta) from www.ntg.nl/context/.
> 
> i'm not sure if that server is already in sync with
> 
> www.pragma-pod.nl
> 
> (will be www.pragma-ade.com again soon)
> 
> >Here are the docs I most often refer to:
> >
> >ConTeXt the manual, January 27, 2000 (cont-enp.pdf)
> >Getting Started with ConTeXt (no date, old commands?)
> >(context-getting-started.pdf)
> >Fonts in ConTeXt, April 2001 (mfonts-beta.pdf)

I did have the same "problem" looking for documentation. I like the
design of the web pages, but at a first look you cannot find
anything. The information you give here (how up to date are the docs)
should belong on the site. You download a manual and realize, that
it's for an earlier version :-( I know of at least one person giving
up on ConTeXt because it was difficult to get the documentation
matching the software.

Another suggestion would be a section, how to get started with popular
distributions. Which ConTeXt version is included in popular TeX
distributions as teTeX or MikTeX (again, with which version)? What
needs to be done to upgrade to current versions?

Probably I am a bit fastidious (sorry, word taken from a dictionary)
by using a Debian GNU/Linux distribution, but a bit more guidance
would be helpful ...

	Matthias