Re: New Member Introductory Rant

[Corin Royal Drummond <corin@studiochango.com>]

Hi Corin, Welcome. I will offer some brief comments, and maybe others 
will elaborate on things I skip, pass over, or inadequately discuss:

Mojca is probably the main point person. Welcome again to ConTeXt and

Best wishes
Idris


Dear Professor Idriss, and the Lovely ConTeXT Community,

What a thoughtful and warm response to my late night introductory rant.  You've most certainly gained a dedicated new user today.  Your restraint and courtesy to my half-considered diatribe is most heartening.  Amazingly, you managed to answer alot of questions I wasn't fully aware I was asking.  

Since I wrote to the list last night, I have continued learning ConTeXt at a frightening clip. Did my first drop caps, indentations, and messed around with setting width and height.  I can't remember when my computer has brought me so much fun.  

I'm beginning to see that there is a fair amount of documentation, but it's sprayed all over and needs some TLC.  I think what I'd like to contribute to ConTeXt is some more docs.  I'm thinking of doing some web video screencasts (easy on Linux) showing off how to do specific things like Lettrines or multi-line headers, explaining the format of options and parameters, and generally helping people see and appreciate the ConTeXt way.  

I would seem that ConTeXt has a natural market in web developers who are used to writing structured documents for layout engines.  Personally, I'd like to see a Drupal module that will ConTeXtify a person's website as a book or magazine for printing.  How great would it be to have an automatically updating e-book for print and screen generated off your website's content based on your tags/taxonomy.  Just add "FortheBook" tag to an article, and without one having to do any more, it will appear in the PDF available on the front page of your site.  There is a LaTeX module for Drupal, but I haven't tried it.  I think such a module would help to whet other web developer's appetite for ConTeXT.  

I think one of the joys of ConTeXt for me is that web development just sucks for typography. There are only a handful of fonts one can specify in any document unless you embed them in images (which God told me was a sin).  By contrast, with ConTeXt, I feel like a kid in a candy store, with so many things I can do to my text.  I nearly had a fit when I got hanging punctuation working. 

 Thanks again for your kind counsel Idriss, I hope I can help you guys out by writing some new docs, and being an evangelist for ConTeXt.  Never have I found a piece of software that so deserved wider recognition.  

I will definitely keep an eye out for Mojca and Luigi.  Would be so excited to meet a local ConTeXt user.  

With deep gratitude,

Corin Royal Drummond
San Francisco


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