docs

docs

[R. Bastian]

Hi,

I would write a french & german intro-source for (quasi absolute) newcomers
which need  to have a working system producing PDF texts. 

But I know nothing about ConTeXt. therefor I cant do anything without your help.
A first series of question:

-. For a newcommer, is Mk II the best choice ?

-. Is it necessary to know TeX ?

or Is ConTeXt (CTX) compatible with TeX ?

I wish to alternate french & german texts (so they can be translated in 
other languages). 

rb

""
Wanderer, kommst du nach LuaTeX,
dann hoff nicht zuviel, sonst hast du PeX
""" ;-)

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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: docs

[luigi scarso]

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On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 2:01 PM, R. Bastian <rbastian@free.fr> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would write a french & german intro-source for (quasi absolute) newcomers
> which need  to have a working system producing PDF texts.
>
> But I know nothing about ConTeXt. therefor I cant do anything without your
> help.
> A first series of question:
>

read-and-answer-in-0seconds

>
> -. For a newcommer, is Mk II the best choice ?
>
yes

>
> -. Is it necessary to know TeX ?
>
yes

>
> or Is ConTeXt (CTX) compatible with TeX ?
>
yes


-- 
luigi

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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: docs

[Diego Depaoli]

2009/5/14 R. Bastian <rbastian@free.fr>:
> I would write a french & german intro-source for (quasi absolute) newcomers
> which need  to have a working system producing PDF texts.
> But I know nothing about ConTeXt. therefor I cant do anything without your help.
> A first series of question:

> -. Is it necessary to know TeX ?
no, if you know Wolfgang :-D

Regards
-- 
Diego Depaoli
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Re: docs

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Thu, 14 May 2009, R. Bastian wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would write a french & german intro-source for (quasi absolute) newcomers
> which need  to have a working system producing PDF texts.
>
> But I know nothing about ConTeXt. therefor I cant do anything without your help.
> A first series of question:
>
> -. For a newcommer, is Mk II the best choice ?

Yes. But the only major difference (from the user's point of view) in MkII 
and MkIV is typescript definitions. Other commands are mostly same.

> -. Is it necessary to know TeX ?

For the most part no. You can use ConTeXt without knowing anything about 
catcodes, text encodings (always use unicode), \hbox and \vbox (use 
\framed etc), and \halign (use tables and mathalignments). You need to 
know a bit about font handling, but ConTeXt does that completely 
differently from TeX.

> or Is ConTeXt (CTX) compatible with TeX ?

It is compatible in the sense that a plain tex document will work in 
Context. You may not always get the same output as the defaults are 
different.

> I wish to alternate french & german texts (so they can be translated in
> other languages).

Also see 
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/ConTeXt_on_Excursion%2C_translations

The wiki page is old and the svn repo is not accessible right now, but 
someone started translating it into french.

Aditya
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Re: docs

[Mari Voipio]

R. Bastian wrote:
> -. Is it necessary to know TeX ?

I assume it depends on what you are planning to do with ConTeXt. I've 
been using ConTeXt for at least five years now, but I've never touched 
TeX (nor LaTeX nor any others, just ConTeXt). I've got a vague idea what 
it is about and that's it.


Some points though:

- background in something else than WYSIWYG editing (What You See Is 
What You Get = Word, for example) helps a lot. Before I started with 
ConTeXt I'd already done my share of html and I've learned to do 
structured documents also in word processing (i.e. "mark it heading 1" 
instead of "make that big and black).

- I do ConTeXt pretty much with the "learn-as-you-go" philosophy and 
when I really have to learn something, I'm pretty determined; most of my 
ConTeXt usage is at work and if something needs to be done, it has to 
get done and I can't back off if it seems difficult first.
(It took me two days, lot of swearing and a few questions on this 
mailing list to achieve my first ConTeXt doc in Cyrillic, but I did it 
in the end. Now it is of course as easy as can be...)

- depends on the operationg system and user's backgrouns, too. Those 
who've used linux/mainframe are probably less likely to be upset by 
ConTeXt while your average Mac/Windows user may go crazy at the steep 
start of the learning curve; I'd done some unix and that definitely 
increased my tolerance.



There are days when I swear and yell and curse myself for going over 
from Word to ConTeXt. But on 9 days out of 10 I pat myself on the back 
for making the switch. Especially on those styles when MS Word defies 
all of my attempts to keep a document structurally styled...




That's my five cents,

Mari
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: docs

[R. Bastian]

On Thu, 14 May 2009 09:49:46 -0400 (EDT)
Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> scribit:

> On Thu, 14 May 2009, R. Bastian wrote:
> 
[...]
> 
> > I wish to alternate french & german texts (so they can be translated in
> > other languages).
> 
> Also see 
> http://wiki.contextgarden.net/ConTeXt_on_Excursion%2C_translations
> 
> The wiki page is old and the svn repo is not accessible right now, but 
> someone started translating it into french.

 Thanks, but I will write the source in the following manner:
--------------------
\german

Was meinst Du?

\bavarian

Woas moanst?

\french
Que veux-tu dire ?
------------------------
It is not necessaury to make texian acrobaties: 
the extraction can be done by a little Python-script

> 
> Aditya
> ___________________________________________________________________________________

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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: docs

[R. Bastian]

On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:45:20 +0200
Henning Hraban Ramm <hraban@fiee.net> scribit:

> 2009/5/14 luigi scarso <luigi.scarso@gmail.com>:
> >> I would write a french & german intro-source for (quasi absolute)
> >> newcomers
> >> which need  to have a working system producing PDF texts.
> >> But I know nothing about ConTeXt.
> 
> On the one hand it's a good idea to write an introduction / a tutorial
> for something you don't know, because you'll learn it that way.
> On the other hand it's a very bad idea to write about something you don't know.
> 
> On the third hand I'm just writing a German introduction for someone
> who will use ConTeXt MkIV for scripts of a private medical school.
> As soon as it's usable, I'll release it open source.
> 
> There are my old intro slides at
> http://www.fiee.net/texnique/?menu=0-1-1&lang=de - but they're from
> 2003 and thus heavily outdated.

Very fine. I will study the source. 

> 
> 
> Greetlings, Hraban
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
> 
> maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
> webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
> archive  : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
> wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
> ___________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: docs

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 14.05.2009 um 17:12 schrieb R. Bastian:

> Thanks, but I will write the source in the following manner:
> --------------------
> \german
>
> Was meinst Du?
>
> \bavarian
>
> Woas moanst?
>
> \french
> Que veux-tu dire ?

When you want you complete document in one language you can write

\startmode[de]
Was meinst du?
\stopmode

\startmode[fr]
Que veux-tu dire ?
\stopmode

and call context with "context --modes=de filename" for the german  
version.

For a version with the text for two languages on facing pages you can  
use
your example code as it is with the streams module.

Wolfgang

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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: docs

[Hans Hagen]

William D. Neumann wrote:

>That is, the other column doesn't flow around the footnote in the other
>column, wasting space and looking ugly.  I asked at least twice on this
>list how to fix this and received no fixes.  If you have a fix, I would
>be *very* pleased to hear about it...
>  
>
i uploaded a new beta, which has column footnotes corrected (i had forgotten to adapt the mechanism to the new multiple notes mechanism); 

a also added the option to put notes in the first column: 

\setupfootnotes[location=firstcolumn|lastcolumn] % columns == lastcolumn 

Hans 



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Re: docs

[Hans Hagen]

William D. Neumann wrote:

> In LaTeX, you get something that looks like:
>
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text[1]   text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>------------------     text text text text
>[1] footnote foot      text text text text
>footnote footnote      text text text text
>footnote footnote      text text text text
>
>
>
>In ConTeXt you get something like:
>
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text[1]   text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>text text text text    text text text text
>------------------
>[1] footnote foot
>footnote footnote
>footnote footnote
>
>That is, the other column doesn't flow around the footnote in the other
>column, wasting space and looking ugly.  I asked at least twice on this
>list how to fix this and received no fixes.  If you have a fix, I would
>be *very* pleased to hear about it...
>  
>
there is \setupfootnotes[location=columns] but i just found out that 
that is broken (i have to adapt that to the new multiple footnotes 
mechanism); will do that

btw, in that case footnotes are placed in the last column  (the reason 
why footnotes by default end up on the page is that there can be mixed 
multi-single column usage

Hans

Re: docs

[William D. Neumann]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Hans Hagen wrote:

> William D. Neumann wrote:
>
> >And that's, unfortunately, a poor view to take.  I would love to use
> >ConTeXt for more of my academic writing, as it makes a lot of tasks much
> >easier, not just layout and design.  Unfortunately, it's inability to play
> >like LaTeX when it comes to even such basic things as footnotes, mean
> >
> eh .. what's wrong with the footnotes?

Set a page in two column with footnotes set to span just the column where
the mark is placed (I forget the full commands to do this... I could look
them up, but you probably know what they are...).  Now, place a footnote.

In LaTeX, you get something that looks like:

text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text[1]   text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
------------------     text text text text
[1] footnote foot      text text text text
footnote footnote      text text text text
footnote footnote      text text text text



In ConTeXt you get something like:

text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text[1]   text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
text text text text    text text text text
------------------
[1] footnote foot
footnote footnote
footnote footnote

That is, the other column doesn't flow around the footnote in the other
column, wasting space and looking ugly.  I asked at least twice on this
list how to fix this and received no fixes.  If you have a fix, I would
be *very* pleased to hear about it...

William D. Neumann

---

"Well I could be a genius, if I just put my mind to it.
And I...I could do anything, if only I could get 'round to it.
Oh we were brought up on the space-race, now they expect you to clean toilets.
When you've seen how big the world is, how can you make do with this?
If you want me, I'll be sleeping in - sleeping in throughout these glory days."

	-- Jarvis Cocker

Think of XML as Lisp for COBOL programmers.

	-- Tony-A (some guy on /.)

Re: docs

[Hans Hagen]

William D. Neumann wrote:

>And that's, unfortunately, a poor view to take.  I would love to use
>ConTeXt for more of my academic writing, as it makes a lot of tasks much
>easier, not just layout and design.  Unfortunately, it's inability to play
>like LaTeX when it comes to even such basic things as footnotes, mean
>
eh .. what's wrong with the footnotes?

Hans

Re: docs

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:21:03 +0200, Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com> 
wrote:

> Hello Idris,
>
> If you tell me what you want from the bib package, chances are that it
> will be added (if you don't, it won't be).

Thnx, Taco, u r right of course; I am just waiting till I can test the 
latest version of m-bib before I submit a report (since u may have already 
fixed things). After I get some mission-critical stuff to the printer I'll 
be in a better position to do that.

Best
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

Re: docs

[Taco Hoekwater]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:34:20 -0600
Idris Samawi Hamid <ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:

> Actually, I think bibliographies are VERY basic. I edit an academic 
> journal; each article has to have its own bib and m-bib can only be used 
> once per document, and the (old) version I use has a few bugs (will try 
> the latest version after some mission-critical stuff is out; I've 
> (amateurishly) hacked the old version so that it at least does what I want 
> for now).

Hello Idris,

If you tell me what you want from the bib package, chances are that it
will be added (if you don't, it won't be). 

Generally, without feature requests there will never be any new features,
and without bug reports bugs will never get fixed. So: if anybody has 
requests for the bib package, let me know.

Greetings, Taco

Re: docs

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 24.06.2004 um 21:34 schrieb Idris Samawi Hamid:
> Question: in what context (no pun intended) do you use InDesign? Where 
> is ConTeXt not so applicable?

My main work (at home) is a bimonthly magazine ("unitarische blätter"
for german unitarian religious fellowship); I know Hans (and perhaps
some others) could do it with ConTeXt, but not me; I prefer to work
"visible" if I use a lot of pictures and a non-scriptable layout.

Further I use it as text processor for letters etc., but therefore
I ever wanted to make a ConTeXt environment.

At work (a daily newspaper) we use InDesign for all the ads - that is,
I work there as a programmer and sysadmin, so I don't really work with
InDesign but only test its PostScript code or PDFs. (Today I recognized
that it always writes OPI comments for TIFFs and never for EPS,
independent from your output options; further it can't separate duplex
EPS from PhotoShop, only DCS...)

Sorry for being OT.

At work I use ConTeXt for presentations (e.g. Acrobat tutorial) and
flowcharts. At home for books, my address book, my ConTeXt tutorial
and some small stuff.


Grüßlis vom Hraban!
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/

Re: docs

[William D. Neumann]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:

> Even if math is "typical" for TeX, it's not typical for ConTeXt.
>
> I think the typical university user is content with LaTeX.
> ConTeXt is for those who like to design their own layout.

And that's, unfortunately, a poor view to take.  I would love to use
ConTeXt for more of my academic writing, as it makes a lot of tasks much
easier, not just layout and design.  Unfortunately, it's inability to play
like LaTeX when it comes to even such basic things as footnotes, means
that I have to constantly turn back to LaTeX whenever I need to write
something for work or school.

> Again, I don't think that bibliographies are basic.
> But I'm no scientific user.

And for those of us who are, bibliographies are *crucial* and should be
considered a basic part of any tpesetting program that wants to be taken
seriously.  And while m-bib is usually sufficient, it too has enough
quirks that it's just not worth the time to even bother if you want to
submit a paper that has a special format requirement for the
bibliographies.

William D. Neumann

---

"Well I could be a genius, if I just put my mind to it.
And I...I could do anything, if only I could get 'round to it.
Oh we were brought up on the space-race, now they expect you to clean toilets.
When you've seen how big the world is, how can you make do with this?
If you want me, I'll be sleeping in - sleeping in throughout these glory days."

	-- Jarvis Cocker

Think of XML as Lisp for COBOL programmers.

	-- Tony-A (some guy on /.)

Re: docs

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 21:12:34 +0200, Henning Hraban Ramm <hraban@fiee.net> 
wrote:

> Again, I don't think that bibliographies are basic.
> But I'm no scientific user.

Actually, I think bibliographies are VERY basic. I edit an academic 
journal; each article has to have its own bib and m-bib can only be used 
once per document, and the (old) version I use has a few bugs (will try 
the latest version after some mission-critical stuff is out; I've 
(amateurishly) hacked the old version so that it at least does what I want 
for now).

But ConTeXt really needs a full-fledged bibliography solution as part of 
the basic package I think.

Question: in what context (no pun intended) do you use InDesign? Where is 
ConTeXt not so applicable?

Best
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

Re: docs

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 24.06.2004 um 16:13 schrieb Maurice Diamantini:
> A ConTeXt reference book would be much like an uptodate
> cont-eni.pdf manual. It would be comparable to the couple
> "LaTeX Lamport + Latex Compagnon"

Would be, should be, yes.

> But the reference cont-eni.pdf doesn't talk about math nor biblio.

Both are extensions from my point of view.

Even if math is "typical" for TeX, it's not typical for ConTeXt.

I think the typical university user is content with LaTeX.
ConTeXt is for those who like to design their own layout.

I seldom need any formula - TeX/ConTeXt is for me simply the
system of choice for big documents (books), presentations and
everything scriptable.
(For most of my work I use InDesign.)

> Also there is several means to do tables, and it seams
> that the two main context reference documents (gettingStart and
> cont-eni.pdf) doesn't talk about the same table system.
> Morever, neither of them talk about the last most supported
> table system which seams to be enattab.pdf!!

Yes, that's confusing.
I made an overview in my german docs, will transfer it to the Wiki soon.

>> And every latex package has its own docs that you should read - some
>> are books itself (e.g. komascript).
> Doen't know about it, doen't need it, so I'm glab it is not in
> the latex manuals :-)

The KOMA classes are an enhanced replacement for the standard LaTeX 
classes
my Markus Kohm. If you use LaTeX it's a pity if you don't know them!

> I think the simplest thing to do is a to make a lite introduction
> documentation for use as a guide about which docs should be seen
> as reference (which table to use, how to to biblio, ...)

Again, I don't think that bibliographies are basic.
But I'm no scientific user.


Grüßlis vom Hraban!
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/