migrating to ConTeXt

migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

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Hi!

Recently I switched to emacs editor and at considered to leave lyx.

At the same time, I'm again considering ConTeXt (was playing with it some
years ago when it was receiving utf-8 support)  - after reading about
luaTeX & MkIV development.

Have several questions, so before firing them up, I'd like to ask about
general etiquette on the list: should I throw them all in one email or
divide as one_question/email ?

Sincerely,
Gour

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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[luigi scarso]

> Have several questions, so before firing them up, I'd like to ask about
> general etiquette on the list: should I throw them all in one email or
> divide as one_question/email ?

hmm...boh.

It depends:
I prefear one email for each question plus an example to test;
but maybe your questions are easy, so it's better one email .
(BTW, it's not easy to say which questions are trivials )
-- 
luigi
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/User:Luigi.scarso/Merry_Christmas_2007
....
it's new .
it's powerful .
it's luatex .
http://www.luatex.org
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:13:31 +0100
"luigi scarso" <luigi.scarso@gmail.com> wrote:

> hmm...boh.

:-)

> It depends:
> I prefear one email for each question plus an example to test;

OK. Will remember for the future...

> but maybe your questions are easy, so it's better one email .
> (BTW, it's not easy to say which questions are trivials )

My writing needs are from short & simple docs (1--few pages long) over preparing
educational presentations (with handouts) illustrated with graphics (both images & SVG) for
seminars (beamer-like) to be used with video-projector in classroom-like environments upt to
the  full size books by using Croatian & English languages and Sanskrit diacritics (not Devanagari
at the moment :-)

So I'm interested whether:

1) ConTeXt can support all the above requirements?

(In the past there were issues with some Croatian chars - iirc - đ & Đ and some utf-8 problems in
general.)

2) If I start with XeTeX engine, will those documents will be compatible with Mark IV?

3) can one run luaTeX on x86_64 (I use Arch Linux & texlive) ?

4) how good is ConTeXt support in AUCTeX and what is the prospect to get preview-ConTeXt?

5) I read LaTeX in proper ConTeXt pdf, but I'm interested is there some helper to convert classical
LaTeX book (book class) to ConTeXt? I've two books which I'm considering to publish as one (~1000p)
in the future, so any help in conversion would be nice.

6) the most important issue - by looking at luaTeX docs & archives I
noticed that it was mentioned there is some book on ConTeXt in
preparation - I gave up on ConTeXt in the past due to this reason -
lack of up-to-date documentation - didn't have enough time to try to
sovle the puzzle by inspecting different 'magazines' etc. cause I was
able to do the kob with LaTeX for which I've documentation in the form
of paper books. I have high appreciation for the ConTeXt package, as
well as the present luaTeX development, but before diving into
adventure of learning the (new) macro package (as investment for the
future), I'm curious to know what is the present situation with the
docs and/or if one can expect to buy some dead-tree version of it in
the not-so-distant future?


I hope the above questions are not too difficult so they justify putting them in a single email.

Sincerely,
Gour
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Jean Magnan de Bornier]

Le 22 décembre à 11:01:22 Gour <ggdasa@gmail.com> écrit notamment:

| My writing needs are from short & simple docs (1--few pages long) over preparing
| educational presentations (with handouts) illustrated with graphics (both images & SVG) for
| seminars (beamer-like) to be used with video-projector in classroom-like environments upt to
| the  full size books by using Croatian & English languages and Sanskrit diacritics (not Devanagari
| at the moment :-)

Hi,
For short documents and presentations you might find emacs-muse handy:
http://mwolson.org/projects/EmacsMuse.html

For more options on presentations see:
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Presentations

AucTeX support for ConTeXt is quite good, but I fear that a preview-latex
equivalent is out of reach now (although is has been announced a while
back).

welcome !
-- 
Jean
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Dec 22, 2007 11:01 AM, Gour wrote:

> My writing needs are from short & simple docs (1--few pages long) over preparing
> educational presentations (with handouts) illustrated with graphics (both images & SVG) for
> seminars (beamer-like) to be used with video-projector in classroom-like environments upt to
> the  full size books by using Croatian & English languages and Sanskrit diacritics (not Devanagari
> at the moment :-)
>
> So I'm interested whether:
>
> 1) ConTeXt can support all the above requirements?

Yes, except that there is no beamer package available in ConTeXt , but
theoretically "anything can be done".

In addition to the core functionality:
http://modules.contextgarden.net/taspresent
http://modules.contextgarden.net/t-rsteps

> (In the past there were issues with some Croatian chars - iirc - đ & Đ and some utf-8 problems in
> general.)

2.56$ for the first buggy đ found in ConTeXt :-)
(We'll drop that letter from our keyboards soon :)

That was before anyone started complaining about its non-functionality :).

Now, unless fonts are problematic, it should work flawlessly. (not
with texfont, since it uses ec.enc which is broken, but texfont is now
a history anyway)

Which general utf-8 problems? There might be some issues every now and
then (in pdfTeX each character has to be defined separately and in
LuaTeX there might be some new unpolished/non-debugged features), but
they're usually resolved once someone complains. Exotic scripts don't
work in pdfTeX of course.

> 2) If I start with XeTeX engine, will those documents will be compatible with Mark IV?

You can always write incompatible code (by using XeTeX primitives),
but in general you should be able to process XeTeX (ConTeXt) documents
with LuaTeX without any problem (the only warning sign is that font
definitions might still change a bit, but that only means changing a
few top lines in your style file). The reverse is not neccessary true
since you cannot use Lua in XeTeX.

> 3) can one run luaTeX on x86_64 (I use Arch Linux & texlive) ?

Sure.

> 4) how good is ConTeXt support in AUCTeX and what is the prospect to get preview-ConTeXt?

AUCTeX is LaTeX oriented I guess, but I don't knom the details.

> 5) I read LaTeX in proper ConTeXt pdf, but I'm interested is there some helper to convert classical
> LaTeX book (book class) to ConTeXt? I've two books which I'm considering to publish as one (~1000p)
> in the future, so any help in conversion would be nice.

It always depends on source, so creating a general converter is
impossible. I would run "search and replace" a few times (depending on
source), but that cannot solve everything.

Mojca
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:00:48 +0100
Jean Magnan de Bornier <jm.bornier@free.fr> wrote:

[...]

Thanks.

> AucTeX support for ConTeXt is quite good, but I fear that a
> preview-latex equivalent is out of reach now (although is has been
> announced a while back).

I explored mailing-archives a bit, but didn't find much :-(
so I sent a post to the list.

> welcome !

Thank you.


Sincerely,
Gour

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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:33:12 +0100
"Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, except that there is no beamer package available in ConTeXt , but
> theoretically "anything can be done".

Sure ;)

> 
> In addition to the core functionality:
> http://modules.contextgarden.net/taspresent
> http://modules.contextgarden.net/t-rsteps

Thanks.

> 2.56$ for the first buggy đ found in ConTeXt :-)

He, he...let's try...

> (We'll drop that letter from our keyboards soon :)

Oh, then I'll stay with friendly lyx/latex...

> That was before anyone started complaining about its
> non-functionality :).

When I was exploring  ConTeXt I was told about that from someone
else. Strange, it was going on...

> Now, unless fonts are problematic, it should work flawlessly. (not
> with texfont, since it uses ec.enc which is broken, but texfont is now
> a history anyway)

Let it stay 'history'.

> Which general utf-8 problems? There might be some issues every now and
> then (in pdfTeX each character has to be defined separately and in
> LuaTeX there might be some new unpolished/non-debugged features), but
> they're usually resolved once someone complains. Exotic scripts don't
> work in pdfTeX of course.

See ml's archives in '02. utf-8 support was quite young then and I thought
XML has some value :-)

> You can always write incompatible code (by using XeTeX primitives),

Not soon :-)

> but in general you should be able to process XeTeX (ConTeXt) documents
> with LuaTeX without any problem (the only warning sign is that font
> definitions might still change a bit, but that only means changing a
> few top lines in your style file). i

Ohh, that's cool...the work is under the hood...

> The reverse is not neccessary true  since you cannot use Lua in XeTeX.

Sure.

> > 3) can one run luaTeX on x86_64 (I use Arch Linux & texlive) ?
> 
> Sure.

That's nice. Both laptop & desktop are 64-bit here.

> AUCTeX is LaTeX oriented I guess, but I don't knom the details.

It says it supports ConTeXt and it does ;)

> It always depends on source, so creating a general converter is
> impossible. I would run "search and replace" a few times (depending on
> source), but that cannot solve everything.

OK. This is not the rush.

What about my last point: docs ?

Sincerely,
Gour
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Dec 22, 2007 3:19 PM, Gour wrote:
>
> > (We'll drop that letter from our keyboards soon :)
>
> Oh, then I'll stay with friendly lyx/latex...

What does lyx have to do with đ and the (Slovenian) keyboard?

> > That was before anyone started complaining about its
> > non-functionality :).
>
> When I was exploring  ConTeXt I was told about that from someone
> else. Strange, it was going on...

Most problems have been resolved about two years ago. But it's true -
đ didn't work for at least half a dozen of different reasons :)

> > Which general utf-8 problems? There might be some issues every now and
> > then (in pdfTeX each character has to be defined separately and in
> > LuaTeX there might be some new unpolished/non-debugged features), but
> > they're usually resolved once someone complains. Exotic scripts don't
> > work in pdfTeX of course.
>
> See ml's archives in '02.

2002? That must be somewhere aroud the bronze age for ConTeXt :-)

> > AUCTeX is LaTeX oriented I guess, but I don't knom the details.
>
> It says it supports ConTeXt and it does ;)

I'm sorry. I don't know that tool at all.

> > It always depends on source, so creating a general converter is
> > impossible. I would run "search and replace" a few times (depending on
> > source), but that cannot solve everything.
>
> OK. This is not the rush.

Well ... I would say ... you need to start somewhere and once you
stumble upon something you don't know how to convert, ask on the list.

> What about my last point: docs ?

That's a taboo, that's why your original question has been removed :)

Mojca
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:09:49 +0100
"Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > (We'll drop that letter from our keyboards soon :)
> >
> > Oh, then I'll stay with friendly lyx/latex...
> 
> What does lyx have to do with đ and the (Slovenian) keyboard?

Ahh, I understood you will start a party to remove support for 'đ' from ConTeXt as well :-)

> Most problems have been resolved about two years ago. But it's true -
> đ didn't work for at least half a dozen of different reasons :)

ok, ok...I'm 50% sold-out to move to ConTeXt ;)


> 2002? That must be somewhere aroud the bronze age for ConTeXt :-)

Now is golden age?

> Well ... I would say ... you need to start somewhere and once you
> stumble upon something you don't know how to convert, ask on the list.

Sure. I'll soon start posting when attempting to mimic some LaTeX behaviour.

> That's a taboo, that's why your original question has been removed :)

Heh, that's why I felt some bad-smell...well, maybe I'm more persistent this time
and/or someone is bold enough to speak about taboos :-)


Sincerely,
Gour
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Wolfgang Schuster]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:11:49 +0100
Gour <ggdasa@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:09:49 +0100
> "Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > > > (We'll drop that letter from our keyboards soon :)
> > >
> > > Oh, then I'll stay with friendly lyx/latex...
> > 
> > What does lyx have to do with đ and the (Slovenian) keyboard?
> 
> Ahh, I understood you will start a party to remove support for 'đ' from ConTeXt as well :-)

\catcode`đ=13
\letđ\relax
\starttext
dđ
\stoptext

> > Most problems have been resolved about two years ago. But it's true -
> > đ didn't work for at least half a dozen of different reasons :)
> 
> ok, ok...I'm 50% sold-out to move to ConTeXt ;)

You should use XeTeX or LuaTeX and you're free from any problem because
đ is now a normal letter as any other character and you could use all
letters in label texts without problems.

> > 2002? That must be somewhere aroud the bronze age for ConTeXt :-)
> 
> Now is golden age?
> 
> > Well ... I would say ... you need to start somewhere and once you
> > stumble upon something you don't know how to convert, ask on the list.
> 
> Sure. I'll soon start posting when attempting to mimic some LaTeX behaviour.

You should better use ConTeXt style and try to avoid LaTeX method,
\quote and \quotation and not "` ...

> > That's a taboo, that's why your original question has been removed :)
> 
> Heh, that's why I felt some bad-smell...well, maybe I'm more persistent this time
> and/or someone is bold enough to speak about taboos :-)

The ConTeXt manual, very difficult topic. All of us want it, nobody is
able or motivated enough to write, we have a few experts for every
topic (mathematics, fonts etc.) but none who who has knowledge about
the whole system and too mayn features are hidden and only documented
in the source.

Wolfgang
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 05:57:03 -0700, Wolfgang Schuster  
<schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:

> The ConTeXt manual, very difficult topic. All of us want it, nobody is
> able or motivated enough to write, we have a few experts for every
> topic (mathematics, fonts etc.) but none who who has knowledge about
> the whole system and too mayn features are hidden and only documented
> in the source.

Which is why we need a team :-) Anyway, as soon as luatex/mkiv is  
relatively stable, the hyperbola is still a bit too far from the asymptote  
at the moment...

Best wishes
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Shi`i Studies
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:57:03 +0100
Wolfgang Schuster <schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:

> You should use XeTeX or LuaTeX and you're free from any problem
> because đ is now a normal letter as any other character and you could
> use all letters in label texts without problems.

Good. I plan to use LuaTeX if it is capable to typeset what I need.


Sincerely,
Gour
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:39:56 -0700
"Idris Samawi Hamid" <ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:

> Which is why we need a team :-) 

Right. This sounds as reasonable proposal - let every expert writes his/her part.

> Anyway, as soon as luatex/mkiv is  relatively stable, the hyperbola is still a bit too far from the
> asymptote at the moment...

Hmm, isn't luatex already quite stable?

Sincerely,
Gour
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen]

Gour wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:39:56 -0700
> "Idris Samawi Hamid" <ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Which is why we need a team :-) 
> 
> Right. This sounds as reasonable proposal - let every expert writes his/her part.
> 
>> Anyway, as soon as luatex/mkiv is  relatively stable, the hyperbola is still a bit too far from the
>> asymptote at the moment...
> 
> Hmm, isn't luatex already quite stable?

yes and no ... luatex's interfaces may change, as may some functionality 
(much starts as experiment, is tested, evolves, is optimized, etc); 
however, as long as you update the binaries and context mkiv at the same 
time you should be able to use it; about august 2008 much of the current 
api will stabelize; august 2009 we hope to have a complete api

i'm using luatex/mkiv is some projects since it's the only way to really 
torture test it (since taco and i are more or less constantly working on 
luatex/mkiv this is doable)

Hans

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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 23:43:35 -0700, Gour <ggdasa@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:39:56 -0700
> "Idris Samawi Hamid" <ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:
>
>> Which is why we need a team :-)
>
> Right. This sounds as reasonable proposal - let every expert writes  
> his/her part.
>
>> Anyway, as soon as luatex/mkiv is  relatively stable, the hyperbola is  
>> still a bit too far from the
>> asymptote at the moment...
>
> Hmm, isn't luatex already quite stable?

It's in beta but there is still a ways to go and features etc. may  
change... same for mkiv (the ConTeXt interface)

But we're getting there...

Best wishes
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Shi`i Studies
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Wolfgang Schuster]

On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:43:35 +0100
Gour <ggdasa@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:39:56 -0700
> "Idris Samawi Hamid" <ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Which is why we need a team :-) 
> 
> Right. This sounds as reasonable proposal - let every expert writes his/her part.

We're too less experts.

> > Anyway, as soon as luatex/mkiv is  relatively stable, the hyperbola is still a bit too far from the
> > asymptote at the moment...
> 
> Hmm, isn't luatex already quite stable?

It's still a beta version but the bugs in the current version should be
fixed and it should work with the latest stable ConTeXt without
problems. I used it myself last week and found and the only real bug is
fixed.

Try it and send examples for problems.

Wolfgang
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Gour]

On Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:29:26 +0100
Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> wrote:

> yes and no ... luatex's interfaces may change, as may some
> functionality (much starts as experiment, is tested, evolves, is
> optimized, etc); 

That's understandable, nothing to complain about.

> however, as long as you update the binaries and
> context mkiv at the same time you should be able to use it; 

OK. I've some problem in using it, but since I decided to migrate to
ConTeXt (printed & put in spiral binding 3 manuals today: excursion, 
manual & commands), i.e. I'm concidering myself a new (old) ConTeXt
user - I'll open a new thread for x86_64 install.

> i'm using luatex/mkiv is some projects since it's the only way to
> really torture test it (since taco and i are more or less constantly
> working on luatex/mkiv this is doable)

Heh, I'll also try to use luatex exclusively hoping to hit some potential
problem and help with some testing.

Sincerely,
Gour
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007, Gour wrote:

> 5) I read LaTeX in proper ConTeXt pdf, but I'm interested is there some 
> helper to convert classical LaTeX book (book class) to ConTeXt? I've two 
> books which I'm considering to publish as one (~1000p) in the future, so 
> any help in conversion would be nice.

I do this quite often (ConTeXt -> LaTeX), so I am just writing my thoughts 
about this. A general purpose translator from ConTeXt to LaTeX is VERY 
difficult, because of the nature of both macro languages. However, it is 
relatively simple to convert a subset of one to the other. Currently, I 
write most of my papers in ConTeXt. For the final version of the paper, 
most journals want LaTeX. I know my style of writing ConTeXt, and can 
easily convert 95% percent of it to LaTeX using regular expressions (and 
have been thinking of exploring gema in more detail: 
http://gema.sourceforge.net/). It is easier to do the rest by hand rather 
than writing a script that takes care of all the corner cases. Usually it 
takes me around 2 hours to convert a (30-40 page) paper from ConTeXt to 
LaTeX. Since this needs to be done only once every six months or so, I 
have not spent too much time trying to optimize my approach. I think that 
the same will be true for conversion from LaTeX to ConTeXt. However, I 
would suggest that you start by writing some ConTeXt documents by hand, 
before you automate the conversion. This way, you will know what you want 
to achieve from a conversion script.

Another option is to write a ConTeXt module that will allow you to 
understand LaTeX. For most environments, this is simple. There are a few 
examples on the wiki about this.


> 6) the most important issue - by looking at luaTeX docs & archives I
> noticed that it was mentioned there is some book on ConTeXt in
> preparation - I gave up on ConTeXt in the past due to this reason -
> lack of up-to-date documentation - didn't have enough time to try to
> sovle the puzzle by inspecting different 'magazines' etc. cause I was
> able to do the kob with LaTeX for which I've documentation in the form
> of paper books.

Actually, from a user's point of view, most things are included in the 
ConTeXt manuals. They are not exhaustive or up-to-date, but do convey the 
essential information. For most tasks you do not need to know the current 
state of affairs in ConTeXt.

Aditya
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Re: migrating to ConTeXt

[George N. White III]

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On 12/24/07, Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007, Gour wrote:
>
> > 5) I read LaTeX in proper ConTeXt pdf, but I'm interested is there some
> > helper to convert classical LaTeX book (book class) to ConTeXt? I've two
> > books which I'm considering to publish as one (~1000p) in the future, so
> > any help in conversion would be nice.
>
> I do this quite often (ConTeXt -> LaTeX), so I am just writing my thoughts
> about this. A general purpose translator from ConTeXt to LaTeX is VERY
> difficult, because of the nature of both macro languages. However, it is
> relatively simple to convert a subset of one to the other. Currently, I
> write most of my papers in ConTeXt. For the final version of the paper,
> most journals want LaTeX. I know my style of writing ConTeXt, and can
> easily convert 95% percent of it to LaTeX using regular expressions (and
> have been thinking of exploring gema in more detail:
> http://gema.sourceforge.net/). It is easier to do the rest by hand rather
> than writing a script that takes care of all the corner cases. Usually it
> takes me around 2 hours to convert a (30-40 page) paper from ConTeXt to
> LaTeX. Since this needs to be done only once every six months or so, I
> have not spent too much time trying to optimize my approach. I think that
> the same will be true for conversion from LaTeX to ConTeXt. However, I
> would suggest that you start by writing some ConTeXt documents by hand,
> before you automate the conversion. This way, you will know what you want
> to achieve from a conversion script.



This is consistent with my experience.

I suggest that anyone considering such conversions creating a simple test
document with one example of each construct you use.   I took Lamport's
sample2e.tex, added a figure and a table, and then made a context version
which is part of my test suite for new  tex installations.


-- 
George N. White III <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia

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