From: Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Subject: Re: Is there anything like developer's manual for ConTeXt?
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:36:54 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <49BF6126.6010707@elvenkind.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <49BF6056.6020702@telefonica.net>
Xan wrote:
> En/na Corin Royal Drummond ha escrit:
>> Wei-Wei Guo wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> After fighting with ConTeXt one month, I find it's too difficult. I
>>> have two years
>>> experience of LaTeX. I never thought ConTeXt could be so difficult.
>>> Using ConTeXt
>>> is like climbing a steep mountain, every step need extensive
>>> searching, reading,
>>> and asking.
>>>
>>> Sorry for the useless complain. I'm stuck by so many problems. I
>>> might be lack of
>>> the basic knowledge of ConTeXt. Could someone tell me where I can
>>> find manuals or
>>> papers that describe the logic of ConTeXt design and basics of
>>> ConTeXt programming.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Wei-Wei
> Yes, there is a hole in that way. I'm agree too.
>> Many have voiced the same complaint. I understand that Hans and every
>> one are occupied with building MKIV (aka LuaTeX), and that
>> documentation is not their highest priority. There's the wiki, the
>> wonderfully active mailing list, and what used to be decent docs from
>> 2001/2002 timeframe. But yes, it's a steep hill to climb, made worth
>> it only by the relative awesomeness of ConTeXt.
>> If there is an existing strategy for creating documentation, I'd love
>> to hear it.
>> My feeling is it's it's time to pay someone to write some good docs.
>> Someone who's not on the development team, who has experience writing
>> technical documentation, and who can shepard list members into crowd
>> sourcing some real documentation.
> The problem is who. Who has this high technical knowledge and he/she is
> not developer?. People I know that have this high tech knowledge of
> ConTeXt is developer.
>> MKIV is stabilizing into usefulness, and now is a good time to
>> start. I suspect list members would donate to such a project, plus we
>> could get some grant money (if that's not all dried up due to the
>> global economy), and maybe some contribution from Pragma itself, and
>> other orgs that depend on ConTeXt. A patchwork quilt of financing,
>> and a project coordinator/writer who sees their work as a labor of
>> love, and a side job, could make this happen. Even if we could only
>> afford 10 hours of work a week, that could get a lot done.
>> In terms of process, I think someone to comb the list archives for
>> common problems and solutions, and wikify them would get the most bang
>> for the buck initially. These wiki entries could later be
>> ConTeXtified into printed (and screen) docs, like Hans' awesome old
>> manuals.
> Good idea.
> Just a suggestion. If someone starts new documentation, it should be
> free. Now the "only" documentation for users is "ConTeXt manual",
> "Context, an excursion" (and some PracTeX journal and MAPS journal
> articles). These documents are copyrated by Pragma. And for the other
> hand the license of documentation of ConTeXt is Creative Commons
> Atribution Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.
>
> I think it's better if the new documentation were free: Creative Commons
> Attribution 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 or GNU
> Free Documentation License. It could estimulate more users than now.
> It's my opinion.
You missed the reference manual rewrite effort (which is now in
remission mostly because of an extremely depressing lack of user
feedback).
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page#Documentation
That is GNU FDL.
> Really how many people are using ConTeXt and how many developers are here?
> For example, how many people are subscribing in this list: it could
> tells us what's the number of users.
About 500, IIRC.
Taco
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2009-03-17 8:36 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2009-03-17 1:55 Wei-Wei Guo
2009-03-17 2:33 ` Corin Royal Drummond
2009-03-17 8:16 ` Taco Hoekwater
2009-03-17 16:20 ` Rory Molinari
2009-03-18 22:00 ` David Wooten
2009-03-19 13:48 ` Michael Bynum
2009-03-19 13:57 ` Aditya Mahajan
2009-03-19 23:32 ` Curious Learn
2009-03-19 23:57 ` Aditya Mahajan
2009-03-20 9:53 ` Jesse Alama
2009-03-17 8:33 ` Xan
2009-03-17 8:36 ` Taco Hoekwater [this message]
2009-03-17 8:47 ` Xan
2009-03-17 8:50 ` Taco Hoekwater
2009-03-17 10:52 ` Wei-Wei Guo
2009-03-19 14:14 ` luigi scarso
2009-03-17 7:57 ` Taco Hoekwater
2009-03-17 9:03 ` Alan Stone
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