Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

John Haltiwanger wrote:
> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm <hraban@fiee.net>wrote:
> 
>> Am 2009-05-24 um 19:17 schrieb John Haltiwanger:
>>
>>  1) Can environment files be used across documents, or is it generally
>>> understood that every ConTeXt document requires its own environment
>>> formatting? (The latter is the view of someone on c.t.t, who said his
>>> perception of ConTeXt was that it was for typesetting individual documents
>>> and had less application beyond that domain.)
>>>
>> Normally you use environment files for coherent projects (magazines, books)
>> or sets of similar documents (letters, presentations).
>>
>> The difference in usage between a LaTeX document class and a ConTeXt
>> environment is neglectable IMO. The real difference is that most LaTeX users
>> just *use* some document class unchanged, because LaTeX doesn't encourage
>> defining your own, while there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt
>> environments available and most ConTeXt users want write their own anyway.
>>
>> For one-off documents I put everything in one file (and perhaps copy setup
>> bits from other one-off files or environments).
>>
>> If *I* require a special layout for a single document, I normally use
>> InDesign. The effort of "programming" a setup or an environment pays off
>> only if you use it more often IMO.
>>
> 
> 
> These paragraphs seems to contradict. ConTeXt is useful if you use an
> environment more than once, but there are no ready-to-use ConTeXt
> environments.

setting up a style for a paper takes a few commands: \setuplayout, 
\setuphead, \setupheadertexts ... and then structure in your document 
can do the rest; however, if we have styles of (say) 40 lines of code, 
users want a different font, diferen theaders etc and patch those 40 
lines which then gives 80 lines most of which are redundant

i've seen that happen a lot: copy an old style, then patch 50%, copy 
that file, patch again, and eventually one gets a big style that is 90% 
code that does more harm than good

as context does need a style to start with, you can just start working 
and then every time you wonder if it should look different, you add a 
few lines to the preamble or style (more fun that way too)

> I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments
> are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things,
> unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I
> am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a
> nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

sure, but all organizations want it slightly different
> 
>  2) What is the state of XML output for ConTeXt files? I have to say I will
>> find it hard to justify using TeX for documents if it means they are not
>> translatable to XML easily. I'm also interested in any RDF support ConTeXt
>> might have.
>>
> 
> XML is no target format for any TeX implementation.
>> XML is a source format, and a good one if you want to process (typeset) it
>> with ConTeXt (and perhaps make HTML from the same source).
>>
>> What do you mean with RDF? This one?: http://www.w3.org/RDF/
>> Or did you mean RTF?
> 
> 
> Yes, I meant RDF. XML is a very important format. I find it odd that TeX can
> generate PDF but cannot output simple XML. So in order to have a semantical
> document I must write it in XML and then process it with ConTeXt? Is the
> capacity there (through LuaTeX perhaps) to write an XML generator?

sure, but how useful is it to have a representation of (e.g.) a node 
list that makes up a paragraph in xml format? no app can do something 
with it

maybe at some point the adobe and microsoft xml output formats become an 
option (which then involves resources like fonts and graphics as well so 
  it's pretty bulky and one might wonder what gain there is)

> While I would expect the reasons for wanting XML output would be obvious, a
> concrete example is that at least one journal is deprecating LaTeX because
> it wants to archive all of its articles in XML.

in which case it keeps the input in xml and converts to other formats 
(coule be tex in the case of rendering print)


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