Re: Who uses ConTeXt

Re: Who uses ConTeXt

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Ahoi!

Someone asked, who uses ConTeXt:

I'm a typesetter and (something like a) printing engineer, working as "system 
coach" (a bit admin, a bit script programmer, a bit teacher, mostly 
troubleshooter...) for the prepress department of a regional newspaper.
At work I use ConTeXt for presentations, workflow charts and sometimes for 
documentations. (Our IT departments wants me to use Word and PP, but they'd 
like to keep me...)

In my spare(?) time I work on publications for my unitarian religious 
fellowship, e.g. our magazine (until now with QuarkXPress, perhaps soon with 
ConTeXt, but it's hard), sometimes a book (at the moment).
As I prepared my first unitarian book I decided to try TeX, as I heard about 
from some friends. Soon I found that LaTeX didn't fit my needs (no grid 
setting), and someone on TeX-D-L (german TeX mailing list) said, he heard 
about ConTeXt, what should be able to do it. And here I am. :-)

To learn ConTeXt a bit better (and because I boasted to much on TeX-D-L) 
I started to write a german documentation/tutorial -- see link below. 
Further I'm working since years on a fantasy book by a friend -- I have to 
type it myself, he writes manually, that's why it's not really going on... 
;-/

BTW, concerning languages: I'd suggest to re-implement everything in 
PostScript, no, better: AppleScript! >;->>
No, really, it's most important to use a language that is easy to get and 
install on a wide variety of OSes. And that seems to be Perl.

(At work I must use WinNT, at home I run Linux and MacOS 9 on a G4 -- but I 
didn't manage to get texexec running with MacPerl.)

Grüßlis vom Hraban!
-- 
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ (should be updated and refurbished...)
---

Re: Who uses ConTeXt

[Axel Rose]

Um 8:27 Uhr +0200 11.07.2002, schrieb Henning Hraban Ramm:
>(At work I must use WinNT, at home I run Linux and MacOS 9 on a G4 -- but I
>didn't manage to get texexec running with MacPerl.)

I would be happy to make the latter possible.
The question here for me isn't MacPerl but a ConTeXt installation
on classic MacOS. I'm using CMacTeX which doesn't contain any
ConTeXt macros.

Eventually only a few people will care about this and use
MacOS X or other platforms.

Axel

Re: Who uses ConTeXt

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am Donnerstag, 11. Juli 2002 11:50 schrieb Axel Rose:
> > I didn't manage to get texexec running with MacPerl.)
> I would be happy to make the latter possible.
> The question here for me isn't MacPerl but a ConTeXt installation
> on classic MacOS. I'm using CMacTeX which doesn't contain any
> ConTeXt macros.

Where's the problem? CMacTeX uses a standard texmf tree, AFAIR.
You only need an unzipper that behaves like GNU zip, that is, merges 
directories instead of creating new ones or overwrite older...

There was an attempt to port VTeX on MacOS Classic; they wrote an
installer with AppleScript that put the files from several unzipped 
directories into one tree... (That was the part that worked; the VTeX alpha 
itself crashed so often and so bad, that I gave up testing.)

At a first look I thought the problem with texexec on MacOS/MacPerl was the 
missing concept of an actual dir. I could make the ConTeXt formats manually 
with CMacTeX's pdfeTeX -- if I saved them I could send you the applescripts.

But without the Perl scripts, ConTeXt is nearly nothing.

Grüßlis vom Hraban!
-- 
http://www.angerweit.de
http://www.fiee.net
http://www.ramm.ch
---

Re: Who uses ConTeXt

[mari.voipio]

[Second try, I still seem to have problems with the configuration of my
email program, got the wrong sender address in the first message.]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Mari Voipio wrote:
>
> First, I'll give my background: I study (sort of...) Scandinavian
> languages, but work as a combined helpdesk-webmaster-communications
> manager-technical writer in a small industrial firm. I'm a Windows
> "power-user", have survival skills in unix and I'm used to the concept of
> structured documents (I even used outline view in Word to structure Word
> docs...), but I have NO LaTeX skills whatsoever.
>
> On the moment I'm using ConTeXt+MikTeX+WinEdt (+WindowsNT or WindowsXP) to
> create a new manual editing system for us, the old manuals have been
> written in Word and it just cannot handle it (surprise...) and I *hate*
> editing that old crud. There are still some font problems to be solved and
> we need to find or create an easily installed pdf creation system for
> people who will translate the manuals, but on the moment I'm happy to
> stick to ConTeXt at it seems to suit the manuals' needs a lot better than
> LaTeX or Word.
>
> In the hopefully not so distant future I'll start writing my
> master's thesis and I'm seriously planning to do this with ConTeXt. It
> shouldn't need any fancy formatting (few pictures, no maths...) and the
> printers over here are happy to accept pdf files. I'm also planning to
> have both Windows and Linux computers at home, so something that migrates
> easily (unlike Word) is high on my list. Maybe surprisingly, I'm planning
> to try ConTeXt with Emacs, even in Windows - I'm not very advanced as
> Emacs user, but experienced in using some basic modes and thus I wouldn't
> have to use different editors in different operating systems.
>
>
> Then, to the reason why I'm writing all this:
>
> On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Randall Skelton wrote:
> > I tend to agree that if there is one single, critical document missing
> > from the ConTeXt manuals it is a 'ConTeXt Cookbook' of sorts.
> <snip>
> > An online, searchable collection of ConTeXt example documents, and code
> > snipits would be an excellent resource and may ease the rather steep
> > learning curve.
>
> Funny, this is one of the two - no, three - things I've been thinking
> about as I may have to write them anyway for work use:
>
>
> 1) A ConTeXt Cookbook
>
> Just like a basic cookbook for your kitchen, this would have an exact list
> of ingredients and instructions on what to do and in which order. This
> would probably be an "intermediate" cookbook that assumes you know some
> basics like "how to turn on the oven = run texexec" and "when the cake is
> done = when the run is over and how to view the results".
>
> I got this idea when one of my first exercises in ConTeXt was to create a
> multiline footer - it took me a day to find the right method (thanks, mail
> archives) and I needed a LaTeX person to help me to fix the last problems.
> I thought that now that I have some kind of a "recipe" for multiline
> footers, I could share it with others, I just haven't got the webspace for
> the "cookbook" on the moment.
>
>
> 2) ConTeXt for Windows Users
>
> This would be a "how to get started" introduction for people, who are
> already interested in structural languages and just want to start using
> ConTeXt in their Windows machines. IMHO, it won't pay to tell them "switch
> to unix/linux", the way to get these people to use ConTeXt is to help
> to help them set it up in their Windows.
>
> I've already happily forgotten what it took to get my ConTeXt combinations
> to work (WinEdT behaved differently in NT and XP...) and that annoys me,
> but I'll probably have to repeat the fight with my new laptop (when I get
> as far as to buying it) and then I'll make notes which I can always expand
> afterwards. This could at least make a start...
>
>
> 3) "ConTeXt for Windows Dummies"
>
> It is more and more common for people to have achieved all their computing
> skills by using an OS with a graphical user interface. They have a
> different way of thinking and thus need a different kind of introductions.
> These people are used to clicking buttons, not giving command line
> commands. And, what's worse, they are used to WYSIWYG editors, the whole
> concept of NOT directly seeing how things will turn out is strange to
> them. (I used to be a basic-level computing teacher, that's why I *know*.)
>
> Unfortunately, the most common text editing/processing systems in Windows
> and Mac do not encourage much writing structured documents (although WP is
> a bit better at that than Word and all have the *facilities*), so that
> idea must be "sold" to their users somehow. The bigger documents the user
> has tried to write with Word or similar, the more likely he/she is to
> understand the advantages of the TeX bases systems. :-)
>
>
>
> It is fairly obvius (at least to myself) that I don't have time to do all
> of this now or in the near future, but there are things I could help with.
>
> The number 3 on my list is something I will have to do anyway, because
> sooner or later a "Windows dummy" will want to translate a manual into
> some other language and I will have to explain, why the file looks like it
> does and why we chose this difficult way of doing things etc. etc. I'm
> hoping to write this thing within the next three months, but if not, it
> will have to be ready by the end of the year. When I have the first draft,
> I'd be glad if somebody would comment it, preferably somebody, who has
> experience of Windows users somehow.
>
> If somebody else starts the cookbook, i.e. finds a space for it and such,
> I'll gladly contribute and also proof-read and/or edit. I'll warn you, I'm
> not a native English speaker, but I'll at least spot most typos and some
> of the odd formulations and I'm used to writing instructions for other
> people, which may help.
>
> The "ConTeXt for Windows How-To" I could probably start after next time
> I've manage to install a working combination on any of my computers (i.e.
> within couple of months). I'll probably need other people after that to
> help me "put flesh on it" and at some point somebody could be a guinea
> pig, but I guess that if I put the list on the web, somebody will use it
> and tell me when things don't work...
>
>
>
> That was my five eurocents,
>
> mari
> Mari.Voipio@iki.fi
>
>