Re: (La)TeX vs ConTeX ?

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 10:28 AM 1/19/2000 +0000, Neville Dean wrote:

>simple: many publications insist upon (or at least prefer) LaTeX. If you 
>use ConTeXt to write your thesis and subsequently decide to publish some 
>of your work then you may have difficulty getting a publication to accept 
>ConTeXt.

Conversion to latex depends on how low level you code your document.
Context has some high level features not present in latex, or not present
in the same way, so that could give problems when converting to another
system that does not support them. 

On the other hand, many publishers accept latex, but send it to a editing
office right away, for recoding (e.g. to xml). I'm sure taco can explain
how kluwer does it in these days / near future, since they start using
context for processing their scientific articles, even if they were
originally coded in latex. 

Alternatively, you can code your document in xml (and process it by
context), which in principle should make publishers happy, but I think they
would be surprised to get xml. 

As long as you stick to high level markup, you're safe. Most context math
(module) can be converted to amsmath (losing only control over general
typo), while structuring commands can be mapped rather easilly.  

The choice also depends on how far one wants to go. For instance, the next
release of context will offer some pretty sophisticated graphic features,
even a bit to the level that (in my opinion) users are forced to think a
bit different about dealing with graphics (for instance layering). And some
more of that stuff it to come (if only to keep myself happy).   

Hans  

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