Story of a newbie looking for a table

Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Jérôme Laurens]

Hi (bis)

I'd like to share my newbie experience about tables.

With iPages, the ''fabulous, marvelous, amazing, simple" word processor 
from apple,
It took me more or less half an hour to design and fill a table, with 
fixed width colored cells and so on.
Unfortunately, once I saved the document, iPages could no longer open 
it anymore... :-(
I then spent a pair of pair of hours (minus half an hour) to try to 
repair things... with no success.

With ConTeXt, I spent a pair of pair of hours (minus half an hour) 
trying to design my table, and less than half an hour to fill it.
Now the work is complete. :-)

But I am not really satisfied, I feel frustrated because I have the 
impression that it took me too much time.
It appears that neither texshow nor garden did help me. So I digged 
into standard Google, and it pointed me to the context mailing list 
archive, finally pointing me to the name of the right manual at pragma 
ADE. Fortunately, this up-to-date manual was online .

Once, my work was complete, I understood that the Google search on 
context garden wiki was limited to context garden...
I then found that some information I was missing about tables was on 
the context garden tabulate page...:-/
But I have the impression that the manuals do contain much more than 
available on contextgarden.

So, is it possible to have the Google search engine at context garden 
also look into the manuals?

Moreover, how do you formulate a request in standard google? Adding the 
"ConTeXt" key word does not lead to accurate results.

Re: Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Wolfgang Zillig]

Hello,

what you can do is: get a local copy of all manuals and then there is a 
small program available called docsearcher (is written in java, so it 
should run on all platforms) 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/docsearcher/  I don't use it on the 
manuals, because after some time you know which one could contain a 
solution for your problem. But it is nice when you have a lot of 
literature in pdf format.

It is also also a nice solution to use googles advanced search options, 
where you can limit the search on a specified location.

Wolfgang

Jérôme Laurens schrieb:

> Hi (bis)
>
> I'd like to share my newbie experience about tables.
>
> With iPages, the ''fabulous, marvelous, amazing, simple" word 
> processor from apple,
> It took me more or less half an hour to design and fill a table, with 
> fixed width colored cells and so on.
> Unfortunately, once I saved the document, iPages could no longer open 
> it anymore... :-(
> I then spent a pair of pair of hours (minus half an hour) to try to 
> repair things... with no success.
>
> With ConTeXt, I spent a pair of pair of hours (minus half an hour) 
> trying to design my table, and less than half an hour to fill it.
> Now the work is complete. :-)
>
> But I am not really satisfied, I feel frustrated because I have the 
> impression that it took me too much time.
> It appears that neither texshow nor garden did help me. So I digged 
> into standard Google, and it pointed me to the context mailing list 
> archive, finally pointing me to the name of the right manual at pragma 
> ADE. Fortunately, this up-to-date manual was online .
>
> Once, my work was complete, I understood that the Google search on 
> context garden wiki was limited to context garden...
> I then found that some information I was missing about tables was on 
> the context garden tabulate page...:-/
> But I have the impression that the manuals do contain much more than 
> available on contextgarden.
>
> So, is it possible to have the Google search engine at context garden 
> also look into the manuals?
>
> Moreover, how do you formulate a request in standard google? Adding 
> the "ConTeXt" key word does not lead to accurate results.
>
> _______________________________________________
> ntg-context mailing list
> ntg-context@ntg.nl
> http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
>

Re: Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Patrick Gundlach]

[...]

> It appears that neither texshow nor garden did help me. 

That is clearly against the intention of both.



> I understood that the Google search on context garden wiki was
> limited to context garden... I then found that some information I
> was missing about tables was on the context garden tabulate
> page...:-/ But I have the impression that the manuals do contain
> much more than available on contextgarden.

Right. 

> So, is it possible to have the Google search engine at context garden
> also look into the manuals?

Not that I know of. If somebody could give me a hint (google-link), I
can put these in. Until there is a combined search on contextgarden,
you can go to  http://articles.contextgarden.net and search through
all manuals. Or use 'spotlight' on your Mac :)

Patrick
-- 
ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net

Re: Re: Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Wolfgang Zillig]

>
>  
>
>>So, is it possible to have the Google search engine at context garden
>>also look into the manuals?
>>    
>>
>
>Not that I know of. If somebody could give me a hint (google-link), I
>can put these in. Until there is a combined search on contextgarden,
>you can go to  http://articles.contextgarden.net and search through
>all manuals. Or use 'spotlight' on your Mac :)
>
>  
>
I don't know that much about web-server administration, but I think it 
should somehow possible to incluce "lucene" into apache and to use it 
for indexing pdf files. http://lucene.apache.org/

Wolfgang

Re: Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Patrick Gundlach]

Hello Wolfgang,

> I don't know that much about web-server administration, but I think it
> should somehow possible to incluce "lucene" into apache and to use it
> for indexing pdf files. http://lucene.apache.org/

The manuals *are* indexed. Perhaps I need to emphasize that more. Just
try the search form at http://articles.contextgarden.net

Patrick

-- 
ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net

Re: Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Mojca Miklavec]

Jérôme Laurens wrote:
> So, is it possible to have the Google search engine at context garden
> also look into the manuals?

As far as I know, there is no option in google to look to more than
one domain at once. It means that you can only search on:
- only contextgarden.net
- only pragma-ade.com
- on the whole www at once,
but not at both contextgarden and pragma at once.

However, if you use the google frame integrated into contextgarden,
you can choose between four options where to search (in the second
step): contextgarden. pragma, ctan or "everywhere". Try it.


There is a documentation mirrored on contextgarden
(http://mirror.contextgarden.net/overview.htm), but it's intentionally
not indexed by google. Perhaps searching the manuals is the only good
reason why it would partially make sense to let google index their
content on contextgarden.net as well.

Perhaps there is some workaround / some elgant way to add only the
manuals to the "allow" section of mirror.contextgarden.net/robots.txt,
while still somehow "preventing" people to refer to the mirrored
documentation instead to the original one. (If there's a note on every
page of mirror.contextgarden.net pointing to the original site or
something similar ...)
I'm not sure if I would do that, but if Hans/Patrick find a good way
to do so, ...


To Jérôme: as a newbie (as you claim it) you have a great opportunity
to contribute to the wiki from your point of view and improve the page
with tables.

Mojca

Re: Story of a newbie looking for a table

[Patrick Gundlach]

[...]

> However, if you use the google frame integrated into contextgarden,
> you can choose between four options where to search (in the second
> step): contextgarden. pragma, ctan or "everywhere". Try it.

That's cool, I didn't know that. Thanks Mojca!


Patrick
-- 
ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net