Re: Ideas for improving documentation of ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

On 10/10/2016 7:43 AM, Jonas Baggett wrote:
> Hello Wolfgang,
>
>
> Le 09. 10. 16 à 22:51, Wolfgang Schuster a écrit :
>> Many of the old manuals got updates by Hans and he included the PDF’s
>> (together with the source files) in the normal ConTeXt download, you
>> can find them in the doc folder in your ConTeXt installation.
>
> Ok, I don't have enough the habit of consulting documentation that is
> installed in my system. I have found something interesting here that
> could be helpfull to me :
> /usr/share/texmf/doc/context/base/examplap/gui/letter.pdf. It seems to
> be a letter generator, but unfortunately I wasn't able to make it work.
> Maybe it is outdated since it is 10 years old.

What context installation do you use? The reference is the one on the 
context garden. Each year tex lives has a snapshot of that one. So, 
first make sure you run the latest version.

Concerning old manuals: they often refer to mkii but with mkiv we have 
different (often better) solutions. The examplap code and examples are 
mkii and also relate to pdf trickery and as pdf evolved it became more 
clear what was bound to acrobat i.e. not picked up (ignored) by open 
source alternatives and therefore less relevant.

In the distribution the manuals made at out end will be added but that's 
mkiv only. The bigger ones will take a while as i have rather strict 
rules (for myself) for the quality of the sources of manuals.

In parallel there is a set of manuals made and being made by users 
(fonts and layout are done, tables and graphics is being worked on) and 
for these the context group is responsible.

Then of course there are all kind of manuals written by other developers 
and users.

An important source are the setup-*.pdf files as these describe the 
interface which is described in the interface definition files (in xml 
format). These have recently be updated by Wolfgang and are very accurate.

You mentioned that keys (functionality) that disappears should be 
somehow documented but normally no functionality disappears. What 
happened was that mkiv has some more (because it's possible) and less 
(because it was no longer needed) than mkii and has been made more 
consistent.

>> The wiki has a page for examples and you’re free to update the
>> existing examples or add new ones.
>
> Do you mean http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Sample_documents ? Yes, that's
> a good idea, since I believe that it is a way to improve documentation
> with little efforts. Then I plan to add the cover letter style I made
> since I am happy with the results, although 1 or 2 things could have
> some improvement. There are also some letter styles there, then I will
> have a look on them too. I don't know if people are intimidated about
> writing contents in the wiki because it is the official wiki and feel
> that only programmers are supposed to update it, but it will be really
> helpfull if the users have more the habit of posting there the document
> styles they made.

Indeed.

>> Sounds interesting and the best thing you can do is to start with it.
>
> Thanks for your encouragement ! Yes that looks like an interesting
> challenge for me, but it is not something I am wanting to do alone
> because of my lack of experience, at least I would need someone to coach
> me. Actually I don't have really experience with web developpment and I
> would at least need help for the technological choices. Having someone
> that tells me that if I use technology X, there are module Y and Z that
> will be a good fit is a good start.

This will only work when someone takes the lead. If you do that you then 
others will help you. If you need something special on the wiki, just 
discuss it with Taco and Mojca who deal with the technicalities.

Hans

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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