Re: upto current

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

Dnia 2013-03-20, o godz. 09:12:21
"Keith J. Schultz" <keithjschultz@web.de> napisał(a):

> Hi Hans, All,
> 
> 
> The biggest crux in using ConTeXt is its documentation.
> True, things have gotten a lot better in the past year!
> 
> Yet, there is no ONE definitive place to get comprehensive
> and EASY to find documentation. 
> 
> 	1) Garden is really not that easy to navigate
> 	2) Garden is loaded with a mixture of mkii and mkiv
>             and it is not always clear if the page one is on is for
> 	    mkii or mkiv or quite outdated.
> 
> 	3) PRAGMA does have up to date manuals.
> 	4) These manuals are quite unfinished in many parts,
>              as are all many of the older manuals.
>    
>                  Very frustrating
> 
> 	5) The newer manuals should be part of the standalone.
>              ( I hate going online to look for a manual when it
>                should be installed already)
> 
> 	6) Reference manuals are fine for the advanced user, but for
> 	    the beginner or intermediate they are not much help.
>             Especially, if if one does not understand TeX, or
> Typesetting, and one really does not need to use all those options.
> 
> My suggestion would be to have garden have a manuals download
> area where one can get the up to date manuals from Pragma and
> where one can discern how old the others are. It should be also, easy
> to find.
> 
> regards
> 	Keith.   

That is quite true, though not that easy.  In essence, I think someone
would have to be paid for tracking the mailing list and updating
manuals.  AFAIK, Sietse does a great job updating the wiki, but the
wiki is not necessarily the easiest thing to go to for newbies (as you
have noticed).

It is quite obvious for me that Pragma won't fund such an enterprise
(not that I'm claiming it should - of course not!).  I think the only
body which might do it is either TUG, either some other UG - but then, I
guess they are already funding LaTeX3 (which is kind of a competitor -
albeit friendly - to ConTeXt), either font projects (TeX Gyre!), which
are quite beneficial to the ConTeXt ecosystem, too.

And there are books - but then, you have to pay for them (which also
seems right, since it is quite an undertaking to write a book,
especially about a "moving target" like ConTeXt...)

So basically: unless there is some significant funding, I'm rather a
skeptic.

Regards,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University
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