Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up

Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up

[Malte Stien]

Hello Everyone,

I have been using ConTeXt for over a year now and worked out how to do most things I need to do. Every now and then, though, I need to do something that I cannot find any information about and in most cases I post a question here on the forum. I have received great help here over the months and like to thank everyone who took the time to answer my questions. The other day, however, I had a problem, posted a message here, got an answer and the answer did not quite work; I went back to the forum, got more help...

In the process I realised that I should have been able to work this out myself; I was not even able to tweak the first answer and make it work. I am an IT engineer myself, but with little time (I guess I am not unique here) and even less experience in TeX. I guess what I am saying is, that I would like to gain a much deeper understanding of ConTeXt which will allow me to "program" in ConTeXt rather than just using the documented command.

To gather information about ConTeXt I have
- read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf)
- bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen
- started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth

I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX mainly because it would mean having a lot more literature and a broader community at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command structure and output of ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am I on the right track? What else should I be doing or reading to really break into ConTeXt?

Regards,
Malte.

PS: Just to be clear; I don't mean for the above to be conceived as shortcomings of ConTeXt, rather I think of them as shortcomings of myself. The developers of ConTeXt have done a fantastic job and I really enjoy writing in ConTeXt and looking at the output.

--
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― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

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Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up

[luigi scarso]

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On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de> wrote:

>
> To gather information about ConTeXt I have
> - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf)
> - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen
> - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth
>
>
I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX mainly
> because it would mean having a lot more literature and a broader community
> at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command structure and output of
> ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am I on the right track? What
> else should I be doing or reading to really break into ConTeXt?
>
>
you have missed
-  read the source
Take a problem, grep the source see how Hans addresses the problem.
There are examples on how to use a feature that sometime are not explained
in manuals.

I think that here mkiv is better than latex (oh, well, after all it's the
context ml , right ?).



--
luigi

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Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up

[Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o.]

Hello,

On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 07:19:44 +0200, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de> wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> I have been using ConTeXt for over a year now and worked out how to do most things I need to do. Every now and then, though, I need to do something that I cannot find any information about and in most cases I post a question here on the forum. I have received great help here over the months and like to thank everyone who took the time to answer my questions. The other day, however, I had a problem, posted a message here, got an answer and the answer did not quite work; I went back to the forum, got more help...
>
> In the process I realised that I should have been able to work this out myself; I was not even able to tweak the first answer and make it work. I am an IT engineer myself, but with little time (I guess I am not unique here) and even less experience in TeX. I guess what I am saying is, that I would like to gain a much deeper understanding of ConTeXt which will allow me to "program" in ConTeXt rather than just using the documented command.
>
> To gather information about ConTeXt I have
> - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf)
> - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen
> - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth

this is a normal approach - questioning, searching for answers... It's the same for ConTeXt as for LaTeX.

Personally, I started with Ltx and migrated to Ctx some years ago.

Big advantages of Ctx are:

- This forum is very alive, almost all questions are answered in short time.

- Ctx document is much more customizable by standard Ctx commands, i.e. - compared with Ltx - you don't need to go in the Ltx source and investigate how to do this-or-that. Ltx seems to me a bit "rigid" - it's not so easy to change style of heads, special paragraphs, enumerations, ...

- Ctx is still developed; AFAIK Ltx ver. 3.? is being prepared/issued several (- at least 5 -) years.

- Ctx: Some features - if they seem useful - may be implemented "on-demand", so they may be ready to use with a next beta (thanks mainly Hans; as well as Wolfgand, Aditya...).

- Although Ctx wiki is not best manual one could imagine, (pros:) it is still maintained and developed (cons: some info may be obsolete, some articles may be written in old-style fashion...)

- Ltx: I don't know how far Ltx is bound with Lua and how this relation is documented; I guess poorly. As Ctx is concerned, many (almost all?) things of TeX/Ctx core may be accessible/hookable by Lua - this is a great feature; and IMHO: as if you are "normal" programmer, programming by Lua should be much more quicker for you than doing things by TeX macro language.

So, my personal advice would be - try to stay with Ctx, I believe after some initial problems/obstacles you'll be becoming "master" and Ctx will become a good "slave".

Best regards,

Lukas


> I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX mainly because it would mean having a lot more literature and a broader community at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command structure and output of ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am I on the right track? What else should I be doing or reading to really break into ConTeXt?
>
> Regards,
> Malte.
>
> PS: Just to be clear; I don't mean for the above to be conceived as shortcomings of ConTeXt, rather I think of them as shortcomings of myself. The developers of ConTeXt have done a fantastic job and I really enjoy writing in ConTeXt and looking at the output.
>

-- 
Ing. Lukáš Procházka [mailto:LPr@pontex.cz]
Pontex s. r. o.      [mailto:pontex@pontex.cz] [http://www.pontex.cz]
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147 14 Praha 4

Tel: +420 244 062 238
Fax: +420 244 461 038

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Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up

[Hans Hagen]

On 6/14/2013 9:17 AM, luigi scarso wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de
> <mailto:malte@stien.de>> wrote:
>
>
>     To gather information about ConTeXt I have
>     - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf)
>     - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen
>     - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth
>
>
>     I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX
>     mainly because it would mean having a lot more literature and a
>     broader community at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command
>     structure and output of ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am
>     I on the right track? What else should I be doing or reading to
>     really break into ConTeXt?
>
>
> you have missed
> -  read the source
> Take a problem, grep the source see how Hans addresses the problem.
> There are examples on how to use a feature that sometime are not
> explained in manuals.

other resources:

- the wiki
- the test suite (lots of small examples)
- modules by (e.g. wolfgangs modules are mkiv compliant)
- maybe examples on stack exchange (there are nice ones there)
- sites like http://randomdeterminism.wordpress.com

and probably more

Hans



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Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up

[Dmitriy Tokarev]

> To gather information about ConTeXt I have
> - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf)
> - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen
> - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth

In addition to the "TeX book" you might be interested in "TeX for the Impatient":
http://www.ctan.org/pkg/impatient

see top of p.8 for recommendations for reading.

--
Dmitriy
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