Re: A new Manual

Re: A new Manual

[Fidel Viegas]

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On 9/28/06, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> What is needed now for greater acceptance of Context is not new
> features but a new manual, perhaps a multi volume set with a
> common index.

> If a consolidated manual set were offered for sale there would be a
> lot of customers.

>I'd buy it in an instant.  With 38 hits on "LaTeX" in Computers &
>Internet on Amazon.com <http://amazon.com/> I'd say that ConTeXt is lagging
behind in the
>published-book-about department.

> nikolai

I also agree with this. The other day I was just searching for Context books
on Amazon and all over the web. I have bought 5 LaTeX books a few years ago
and I was expecting to find some Context books. Also, some of the Context
manuals are still unfinished. Specially the ones about style and layout. I
liked those manuals very much, but too bad they are incomplete. I was
looking for some book about that.

Fidel.

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A new manual

[John R. Culleton]

What is needed now for greater acceptance of Context is not new
features but a new manual, perhaps a multi volume set with a
common index. The 2001 manual is great, but many of the features
discussed daily here are not in it. One must chase around the
wiki and the individual manuals like "details", and that is not
satisfactory from the point of view of the new user. Most of us
have memorized the locations of key information but newcomers
have not.

If a consolidated manual set were offered for sale there would be a
lot of customers. Or an abridged version, something like the
1999 Excursion manual but expanded and updated, would be a
possibility. 

-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexing and Typesetting
Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost.
Satisfaction guaranteed. 
http://wexfordpress.com

Re: A new manual

[Nikolai Weibull]

On 9/28/06, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> What is needed now for greater acceptance of Context is not new
> features but a new manual, perhaps a multi volume set with a
> common index.

> If a consolidated manual set were offered for sale there would be a
> lot of customers.

I'd buy it in an instant.  With 38 hits on "LaTeX" in Computers &
Internet on Amazon.com I'd say that ConTeXt is lagging behind in the
published-book-about department.

  nikolai

Re: A new manual

[Marcus Vinicius Mesquita de So]

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I would buy it too...

Marcus Vinicius

 		
---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.

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Re: A new manual

[Alexander Lazic]

On Don 28.09.2006 09:42, Marcus Vinicius Mesquita de So wrote:
>I would buy it too...

I too ;-))

Ragards

Alex

Re: A new manual

[Ricard Roca]

And me too. No doubt!

Ricard Roca

Re: A new manual

[gnwiii]

On 9/28/06, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> What is needed now for greater acceptance of Context is not new
> features but a new manual, perhaps a multi volume set with a
> common index. The 2001 manual is great, but many of the features
> discussed daily here are not in it. One must chase around the
> wiki and the individual manuals like "details", and that is not
> satisfactory from the point of view of the new user. Most of us
> have memorized the locations of key information but newcomers
> have not.

I don't agree that lack of a current manual is a big problem for
potential users of ConteXt. In my experience, the biggest problem is
with the 3rd party tools (perl, ghostscript, ruby) on Win32 and legacy
commercial unix (where ruby is not provided and the system perl will
be a very old version).

You can write simple LaTeX documents without working 3rd party tools
(MikTeX-2.5 seems to provide ghostscript), but you need perl and ruby
before you can format anything in ConTeXt.  There should be some tools
to check the functioning and versions of ghostscript, perl, and ruby.
A VMWare player appliacance might be helpful for people with current
Win32 systems (e.g., ample CPU, disk, and RAM).

> If a consolidated manual set were offered for sale there would be a
> lot of customers. Or an abridged version, something like the
> 1999 Excursion manual but expanded and updated, would be a
> possibility.

Any printed manual will soon become stale.  What is needed is an
introductory manual
for new users together with an ongoing process to provide current
information.  The wiki is a good start, but there needs to be more
effort to ensure that the sources can be used as the definitive
manual.  The introductory manual should devote considerable space to
explaining how to find current information in the wiki and or using
the source files.

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

Re: A new manual

[John R. Culleton]

On Friday 29 September 2006 10:19, gnwiii@gmail.com wrote:
> On 9/28/06, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> > What is needed now for greater acceptance of Context is not new
> > features but a new manual, perhaps a multi volume set with a
> > common index. The 2001 manual is great, but many of the features
> > discussed daily here are not in it. One must chase around the
> > wiki and the individual manuals like "details", and that is not
> > satisfactory from the point of view of the new user. Most of us
> > have memorized the locations of key information but newcomers
> > have not.
>
> I don't agree that lack of a current manual is a big problem for
> potential users of ConteXt. In my experience, the biggest problem is
> with the 3rd party tools (perl, ghostscript, ruby) on Win32 and legacy
> commercial unix (where ruby is not provided and the system perl will
> be a very old version).
>
Interesting. There are minimal Context distros for each of the
major platforms. Does the Win verson include the missing
compilers? 
> You can write simple LaTeX documents without working 3rd party tools
> (MikTeX-2.5 seems to provide ghostscript), but you need perl and ruby
> before you can format anything in ConTeXt.  There should be some tools
> to check the functioning and versions of ghostscript, perl, and ruby.
> A VMWare player appliacance might be helpful for people with current
> Win32 systems (e.g., ample CPU, disk, and RAM).
>
> > If a consolidated manual set were offered for sale there would be a
> > lot of customers. Or an abridged version, something like the
> > 1999 Excursion manual but expanded and updated, would be a
> > possibility.
>
> Any printed manual will soon become stale.  What is needed is an
> introductory manual
> for new users together with an ongoing process to provide current
> information.  The wiki is a good start, but there needs to be more
> effort to ensure that the sources can be used as the definitive
> manual.  The introductory manual should devote considerable space to
> explaining how to find current information in the wiki and or using
> the source files.

My preferences in order are printed book, downloadable source,
downloadable pdf and online anything. Information needs to be
structured, indexed, portable, easily readable. 

-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexing and Typesetting
Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost.
Satisfaction guaranteed. 
http://wexfordpress.com

Re: A new manual

[Geoffrey Alan Washburn]

John R. Culleton wrote:

> My preferences in order are printed book, downloadable source,
> downloadable pdf and online anything. Information needs to be
> structured, indexed, portable, easily readable. 
	
	Speaking of printed manuals, it struck me the other day that an interim 
solution would be to use Lulu (www.lulu.com) to obtain printed copies of 
the existing manuals.  However, it would probably be best if the folks 
at PRAGMA ADE were to handle this to avoid some of the copyright issues, 
and they might as well be the ones receiving any profits from the sales.

Re: A new manual

[Hans Hagen]

gnwiii@gmail.com wrote:
>
> I don't agree that lack of a current manual is a big problem for
> potential users of ConteXt. In my experience, the biggest problem is
> with the 3rd party tools (perl, ghostscript, ruby) on Win32 and legacy
> commercial unix (where ruby is not provided and the system perl will
> be a very old version).
>   
actually, one could run context using "pdftex --fmt ...... " but it's 
less convenient;

technically i could generate most of the tuo file directly (although 
index sorting always has to rely on an external prog)

some two pass data (cross ref etc) can be loaded before an aux file is 
written, but toc info cannot, and tex itself cannot rename a temp file 
afterwards; because context can create tocs at any level any time, this 
means that there will always be a need for an separate read and write 
file (actuallym this is also true for more two pass data since some data 
structures may be defined anywhere in teh document which also leads to 
async loading)

in luatex, i will probably write the index sorter in lua as well as 
support a different two pass info model as well which means that in 
principle one could provide an embedded kind of texexec funtionality; of 
course multiple runs still have to be managed by some external script 
then but this can be simple since tex itself can signal the need for that

don't be surprised if contex mkiv provides a different user experience

Hans


-----------------------------------------------------------------
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              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: A new manual

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Hans Hagen wrote:

> gnwiii@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> I don't agree that lack of a current manual is a big problem for
>> potential users of ConteXt. In my experience, the biggest problem is
>> with the 3rd party tools (perl, ghostscript, ruby) on Win32 and legacy
>> commercial unix (where ruby is not provided and the system perl will
>> be a very old version).
>>
> actually, one could run context using "pdftex --fmt ...... " but it's
> less convenient;
>
> technically i could generate most of the tuo file directly (although
> index sorting always has to rely on an external prog)
>
> some two pass data (cross ref etc) can be loaded before an aux file is
> written, but toc info cannot, and tex itself cannot rename a temp file
> afterwards; because context can create tocs at any level any time, this
> means that there will always be a need for an separate read and write
> file (actuallym this is also true for more two pass data since some data
> structures may be defined anywhere in teh document which also leads to
> async loading)
>
> in luatex, i will probably write the index sorter in lua as well as
> support a different two pass info model as well which means that in
> principle one could provide an embedded kind of texexec funtionality; of
> course multiple runs still have to be managed by some external script
> then but this can be simple since tex itself can signal the need for that
>

Does this mean that in future (distant future) it will be possible to 
simple pass cont-en.fmt file along with the source file and write

%&cont-en

in the tex file, and someone just having plain tex can run

tex filename (possibly multiple times) to get the output?

If so, it may make things like submissions to some journals and online 
archives like arxiv very easy.

Aditya

Re: A new manual

[Taco Hoekwater]

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> 
> Does this mean that in future (distant future) it will be possible to 
> simple pass cont-en.fmt file along with the source file and write
> 
> %&cont-en
> 
> in the tex file, and someone just having plain tex can run
> 
> tex filename (possibly multiple times) to get the output?

Basically yes. Assuming they have luatex installed.

Taco

Re: A new manual

[fdu.xiaojf]

John R. Culleton wrote:
> What is needed now for greater acceptance of Context is not new
> features but a new manual, perhaps a multi volume set with a
> common index. The 2001 manual is great, but many of the features
> discussed daily here are not in it. One must chase around the
> wiki and the individual manuals like "details", and that is not
> satisfactory from the point of view of the new user. Most of us
> have memorized the locations of key information but newcomers
> have not.
>
> If a consolidated manual set were offered for sale there would be a
> lot of customers. Or an abridged version, something like the
> 1999 Excursion manual but expanded and updated, would be a
> possibility. 
>
>   
I agree.

A better and up-to-date manual will surely help the promotion of ConTeXt,
because it make it easier to know it, learn it, use it and fall in love
with it, not just for new users, but also for all non-expert people.

Regards,

xiaojf