Re: PhD Thesis in ConTeXt

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl>]

Dnia Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 07:56:27PM +0200, Piotr napisał(a):
> Hello,
> 
> I have spent some time with google in order to find an answer to the
> following questions. Unfortunatly, I was not satisfied with the
> answers, which I now hope to find here.
> 
> It is my plan not to use the MS Office suite for the production of my
> PhD thesis (in chemistry). I have used Miktex some years ago during my
> studies for some project reports, and I remember beeing quite
> satisfied with the results. My Master thesis, on the other hand, I
> wrote in word.. and although I remember not having too many
> difficulties, there were some nasty obstacles to be overcome.
> Obstacles which I simply do not want to risk having repeated a second
> time on a much bigger scale.
> I this mailing list I read several reports of people who either had
> written their thesis in Latex or ConTeXt. There was a mention of Latex
> beeing designed for mathematic purposes, while ConTeXt was said to be
> better suited for the intergration of graphics or larger/more complex
> layout changes.

I'm also rather a ConTeXt newbie (and I daresay that I am more of an
expert as far as plain TeX and LaTeX go), but I'll butt in with my
$3*10^{-2};).  I guess I have some right to say something here, too,
since I was first a long-time plain TeX user (about 6 years'
experience), then a LaTeX user (another 6 years or so) and now I've been
trying hard to use ConTeXt for some months.

> 1) Finding the right context
> For now I had quite some difficulties to find that proper Latex
> distribution - a problem that actually led me to the existence of
> ConTeXt. I am wondering which latex distribution I should choose in
> order to work with ConTeXt? I am running Windows Vista (64-bit). Or is
> there a ConTeXt stand alone package that will absolutely satisfy my me
> in my needs? In principle, all I need is

Well, *the* TeX distribution is texlive (AFAIK, it works under unices,
windows & mac).  MikTeX is a popular alternative for windows; it should
also contain ConTeXt, although not necessarily the state-of-the-art one.
Nowadays texlive has an automatic package update (much like MikTeX).
And if you want to use the latest-and-greatest ConTeXt, the so-called
"minimals" are for you.  (On a day to day basis, I use ConTeXt MkII
which came with texlive, and it's enough for me; I don't use all these
fancy things like xml, opentype fonts etc.  OTOH, I have some newer
version, too, just in case I need it some day.)

> 2) The right editor
> What is the preferred editor for ConTeXt? for such a project? Is there
> any loss in functionality when using Texniccenter with ConTeXt than
> with MikTex instead?

Well, my heart is breaking when I type this, but my beloved emacs;) has
rather poor ConTeXt support...  I use Emacs 22 with AUCTeX 11.84.  Well,
although it *works*, it is by no means convenient - at least not that
convenient as an emacs should be;).  Hans uses SciTE, which should
therefore be a good answer.

> 3) I have seen some thesis templates/examples in this mailinglist. Can
> anyone point me to additional sources regarding the creation of a PhD
> Thesis with ConTeXt? What is the advantage over Latex, what are the
> disadvantages? Is there a win-win distribution somewhere on the table?

Well, recently I'm starting to prefer ConTeXt over LaTeX very much.  The
are quite a few reasons.  (I blogged about some of them some time ago;
you may find this post here:
http://mbork.pl/2008-08-26_Dlaczego_nie_lubię_LaTeXa; notice it's in
Polish, so of no use to most people on this list;).  I plan to translate
this into English, but this not very high on my priority list...)

To sum it up (especially for non-Polish people here;) - I assume that my
answer *might* be of interest not only to the author of this thread;)),
the problems are as follows: while LaTeX is very nice when you write a
scientific paper, it's not that nice when you write a test for students
or a letter to Aunt Henrietta;).  Another thing is an always possible
package clash, which is highly improbable in a monolithic system like
ConTeXt.  And yet another is that many, many things in LaTeX have a
somehow "hacky" feeling about them, and in ConTeXt they are much more
natural (take the enumerate/enumitem packages, for instance, or text
floating around graphics, or multicolumn typestting...).  And last but
not least - in LaTeX, writing content is easy, changing the way things
look is difficult (I know, this is an oversimplification and need not
always be the case, but this is my general feeling); in ConTeXt, both
are easy.

There are some caveats, too.  More about them in a moment.

> 4) Has anyone used a typesetting suite like ContTeXt with CVS?

As it was pointed out, you write just plain text files, so it's not a
problem (and I would consider it highly recommended!).  Personally, I
use (another) ancient system (RCS); since I write my documencts mainly
by myself, it suffices for me.

> 5) Is the ConTeXt reference system compatible with Endnote?

That I have no idea of - but this question was (at least partially)
answered.  I have no experience (yet) with bibliographies in ConTeXt; in
LaTeX, I strongly recommend the amsrefs package over BibTeX, which I
dislike very much.  But this is off-topic a bit here;) and I include it
only in case you choose LaTeX.

> Is there any point to have latex installed, when context can do the
> trick? Or lets ask the devils advocate the other way around: What is
> the point of installing context, when latex could do the trick? Apart
> that I have to re-learn latex anyway.. what is better with Context?

For me, there *is* a point in installing LaTeX: most mathematical
journals accept LaTeX files and not ConTeXt ones.  I don't know what it
is like with chemistry.  OTOH, in case of simple documents (here
"simple" means not only "simple" in the usual meaning, but also: "not
messing with the presentation, but containing only content, and leaving
the look to the class authors"), automatic conversion in either way
should be rather easy.

Another disadvantage of ConTeXt is much smaller userbase; this might be
a problem when something does not work; OTOH, the ConTeXt userbase is so
active and helpful, that this should not be a serious problem...  (I'm
not saying that LaTeX userbase is worse, but being much, much bigger
seems not to translate into being much, much more active/helpful - the
level of activity and "helpfulness" is similar.  Well, in fact it is
difficult to imagine that the userbase of some tool could actually be
*more* helpful and active;).)

Yet another thing is that ConTeXt lacks good documentation - we all know
that 24h is 24h also for Hans, so no-one blames him for that, and there
is the great wiki - but sometimes it's a bit frustrating (at least for
me).  Don't expect that you will be easily able to learn everything in
ConTeXt by yourself; expect to be a frequent visitor of this mailing
list and the wiki.  If this is ok for you, no problem.  Also, be
prepared for a situation when something does not work and you have no
idea why.  (Well, this may happen with LaTeX, too, not to mention M$
Office;).)

OTOH, LaTeX documentation (I mean here documentation of different
packages) has a very, very wide spectrum - from the excellent docs for
pgf and beamer to the only thing being available being one page example
and some obscure source code...

I hope that fanatic ConTeXters won't kill me for what I've written above,
but in case they get angry let me stress now some other advantages of
ConTeXt.

* many more things are available "out of the box" - and they usually
  Just Work (TM).  (Well, not always - maybe some things work better in
  LaTeX - but still, you can always ask here, and if your question is
  well-defined, most probably sooner or later some wizard will help
  you.)

* the layout design is way more user-friendly - and if you are both the
  author and designer, this is important.

* it's much easier to do graphics, linked pdfs or colors in ConTeXt than
  in LaTeX; it is much more modern.  ConTeXt is also well-suited for
  preparing presentations, although now that we have the beamer LaTeX
  class, doing it in LaTeX is also a very pleasant experience.

Summing it up: use ConTeXt.  It will be frustrating from time to time,
but rewarding and fascinating most of the time.  The learning curve has
similar slope as for LaTeX (which will BTW also give you your share of
frustration), and you will get to know all these wonderful people on
this list:).  (Not that the LaTeX people are worse!)  And if you choose
ConTeXt, it will be not only you who will benefit, but also the society:
the more people use ConTeXt, the better it may become (I mean especially
documentation and wiki).

> Regards,
> 
>   Piotr Jakubowicz

Greets

-- 
Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl)

This program is written in Perl.  While stronger people find reading
Perl code character-building, it should not be shown to people in their
formative years.  The author will not accept any responsibility for any
moral grief caused.

	    (The McKornik Jr. Public License)
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