specific document layout with ConTeXt

[Brecht Machiels <brecht@mos6581.org>]

Hello,

I have some experience using LaTeX as I have used it to typeset two 
master theses. Having started a PhD a year ago, the need to write some 
publications arises. However, while IEEE conferences/journals used to 
offer LaTeX templates in the past (as far as I know), it seems that 
recently LaTeX support is being dropped and only MS Word templates are 
offered. Take for example the RFIC 2009 conference: 
http://www.rfic2009.org/rfic2009/authorguide.html

Considering my more-or-less good experiences with LaTeX in the past, I 
still prefer to write a publication using LaTeX, and not Word. This 
would require me to copy the MS Word template in LaTeX. However, I do 
remember that fine-tuning things to look just the way I want in LaTeX 
can result in quite the headache. That's why I started looking for 
alternatives.

Initially discarding TeX and all it's descendents because they are 'not 
very modern', I ended up with Lout (http://lout.wiki.sourceforge.net/). 
This looked quite promising, as I managed to closely approximate the 
Word template by means of adjusting the options to the "report" document 
class Lout offers (not considering images and tabled for the moment): 
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bmachiel/rfic/rfic2009f
By extending the reportf class definition, I also managed to add an 
"index terms" section:
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bmachiel/rfic/rfic2009f
This was all surprisingly painless. The document lout source and pdf are at:
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bmachiel/rfic/template.lout
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bmachiel/rfic/template_lout.pdf

However, trying to learn more about Lout -- for example to change 
subsection numbering -- it seems that the programming language that Lout 
offers confuses me almost as much as TeX macros do. Perhaps my mind is 
accustomed too much to nice object-oriented languages like Python and I 
simply cannot be bothered by this complex stuff anymore. (a Python-based 
typesetting system; now that would be heaven... maybe)

Some other things bother me about Lout:
* Much smaller userbase than (La)TeX. Will I find the help I need?
* No means of "inheriting" the report class and changing it. I have to 
physically copy the class definition and change the code. I recall it is 
possible to do some kind of redefinition in TeX, right?

In looking for an alternative to this alternative, I found that the TeX 
community is very much alive. Even though TeX's 'not very modern'-ness, 
these new developments might offer something interesting. I remembered 
that ConTeXt, unlike LaTeX, allows much finer control over the layout of 
a document. Hence, it would probably be the next candidate for this 
little typesetting adventure of mine. Today, I finally got my hands 
dirty and tried to recreate the RFIC2009 template using ConTeXt.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of a good document class to start with, it 
is proving to be much more difficult to create something that resembles 
the Word template. As I have also read on this mailing list, the 
documentation, while there is plently to be found, is a bit messy. 
Appareantly the documentation is not up to date with ConTeXt? Perhaps it 
would be good to remove outdated documentation and clearly present only 
one reference manual (the most up to date) to the new user.

I did find some samples on the wiki, but the first two that I tried to 
compile apparently required some extra packages. Also, while I always 
thought it was a good idea to seperate content and layout, some of the 
examples on the wiki seem to suggest to mix them. Or is this the 
philosophy behind ConTeXt?

May I suggest some work is put into creating some basic (plain) document 
templates (well-commented) which can be used by ConTeXt newbies, but can 
also be used as starting points for creating new templates?

On to the template then.

http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bmachiel/rfic/rfic2009.tex
This is a first attempt at creating an environment to describe the 
layout of the template. As you can see, I have not yet gotten far. I 
copied the title code from the contextgarden wiki. The TeX code makes me 
shiver however. I will have to catch up on that.

http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~bmachiel/rfic/template.tex
This is the template itself. I basically want this file to contain as 
little layout stuff as possible. I would like to define the title, 
author, abstract and index terms before \starttext. If possible, the 
environment should place those parts automatically without having to 
specify \placetitle after \starttext.

I was hoping that the friendly people on this mailing list might help me 
get started in creating this template. Let's start with the following:
* title, author, abstract and index terms as explained above
* the fact that there are 2 columns should be specified in the environment
* define title, author, abstract and index terms fonts clearly, similar 
as in the Lout rfic2009 file and use this information to format the 
title stuff.

Looking at the countless documents that show off ConTeXt, it is obvious 
that it is very much possible of creating custom layouts. However, I 
wonder, how much TeX hacking is required?

Kind regards,
Brecht
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