ConTeXt-live distribution

[Maurice Diamantini <diam@ensta.fr>]

Le 10 déc. 03, à 11:39, Patrick Gundlach a écrit :

> Bob Kerstetter <bkerstetter@mac.com> writes:
>> ... that a user like me with no root access
>> might encounter to get the system to run. In short, someone who can
>> lead me in small steps through the installation process."
>>
>> Do such instructions already exist? Or, if someone can provide that
>> type of help, please contact me offlist and I'll put y'all together.
>
> I have put some instructions at http://levana.de/context/ I could
> help with installation steps.

I think Hans provided a limited version for a context standalone
distribution.
But I had problem for install it (whith perl) so I give up.

Also the standard tetex distribution provided with fink (on MacOSX-10.3)
did'n work for me (some itemize bug), and I had to install the texlive
distribution.

The texlive is very nice because it is complete. But it is very heavy
(only the demo version old on a single CD-ROM : the full texlive
take 1.2 Go and need a DVD !)

Why is texlive so big ?
Because it contains all old stuff that any LaTeX/TeX distribution should
contain to be compatible with every TeX based document from the
last few decade ;-)
- every package which was ever able to do multicols
- every package which allows to do clever table
- every package which allows to do verbatim, ...

But ConTeXt is an independant, modern TeX based distribution (even if
it don't (yet) know about simple html :-).

So was do we need to be able to switch from LaTeX to ConTeXt?
- a simple standard tetex distib for our old LaTeX document
- a standalone ConTeXt distribution similar to the texlive
   in the idea

This ConTeXt-live should be multiplatform and contain:
- all uptodate reference doc about ConTeXt tools
- all available exemples or model documents
- all contrib extention (m-bib, math, ...)
- the TeX/Metapost and perl distribution.
- all tools (xml, html, ....)

This could be distibute as iso image and could be
use as simple (no privilege) user.

This would also make much easier to give acces to context to
beginer (without the need of texmf experience).


Also, what is missing for ConTeXt versus LaTeX
1 - some good LaTeX class emulation
     (a simple "table of content" is uggli in ConTeXt)
2 - some exemples for writing mathemaics using the new Giuseppe
     math packages
3 - some mean to write xml or html FROM ConTeXt (and NOT the reverse!)
3 - some package or binding to Lilypond (for writing music/midi and xml)
4 - ...

-- Maurice Diamantini (a recent latex2context switcher)

P.S
sorry for my bad english