Modules

[Marco Kuhlmann <mk@mcqm.net>]

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    Today I got into trouble.

In summer, I have started what I thought would be my transition
from LaTeX to ConTeXt. It all seemed so obvious: ConTeXt is
richer in features, has much cleaner code, and there's a lot of
innovation. And if I had a problem, or even a feature request,
I could just write to you all.

Today my view of things got challenged. I must admit that the
cause (though not the causing) for my doubts is my
disappointment with the math module on the one hand, and the 
pressure that I put onto myself to convert my society's macro
collections into ConTeXt on the other. However, here they are:

One of the strengths of LaTeX is the number of add-on packages
available for it. Of course, this also is one of its
weaknesses: there is a lot of overhead, some packages do not
interact well with each other, there are a lot of developers
with different styles, etc. When I prepared my first book using
ConTeXt, I was amazed to see that everything got so simple.

However, I wonder if not ConTeXt needs some of that LaTeX
feeling. In LaTeX, when you miss a feature, you know that there
is a package out there that implements it. In ConTeXt, you ask
Hans et al. Why are there so few modules?

It may of course be due to the relatively small number of
users. However, one important reason in my opinion is the lack
of a well-defined module interface. How should modules be
designed? Is there a standard library of functions that they
could or should use? If I wrote a new module, how would I
distribute it (for LaTeX, I would use CTAN)?

What I propose it that we should think about going public.
ConTeXt has so much to offer, it should become more widely
used. A promising way to achieve this is to get more and more
people involved in enhancing and documenting it. That does not
say, of course, that base ConTeXt could and should not remain
in the hands of PRAGMA. But an active community of developers
working on extensions to the core is a good thing. And if it is
well organised, it does not have to threaten the integrity of
the system as a whole.

    What do you think?
    Marco

-- 
Marco Kuhlmann                 http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~kuhlmann/

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