Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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Hello,

My name is John and I'm a nearly brand new TeX convert. All it took was one
letter I wanted to look nice and now I know I will never craft an important
document in another format again.

Now, an obvious entry point is LaTeX, and indeed my first TeX document used
this macro package. However, I couldn't help but stumble across the ConTeXt
project in my investigation of the TeX landscape. The seemingly distinct
separation of style from content, evidenced by the print versus the screen
versions of some of the manuals, instantly endeared me.

Within the same week, I found the comp.text.tex newsgroup. Lo and behold
there was a quite active thread on LuaTeX, which I had just finished reading
a presentation and a couple papers on the night before. On of the issues
being discussed was the lack of a LaTeX document class for "thesis". This
also involved discussion of LaTeX's shortcomings.


I wrote into the thread that based on my (albeit completely theoretical)
understanding, ConTeXt would be a wiser choice as a macro for any new
department to begin requiring TeX documents. This was based on my vague
understanding of the separation of environment from the content, as it were,
and also on the multiple outputs available for the manuals. Since I see
screen formatting as equally important, if not more, than paper formatting,
it only made sense to me that the equivalent of a unversity specific
documentclass in LaTeX would be a simple environment file in ConTeXt.


This leads me to some questions I have about how great a fit for me ConTeXt
actually is.


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.)


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.


I am just beginning my journey into TeX, and wish to learn the best macro
package available. To me it seems like this is ConTeXt hands down, however
the two questions above will indeed determine ConTeXt's actual utility in my
case.


Regards,

John C. Haltiwanger


P.S. For my first question, it seems easy to assume that if you can process
XML files into standardized ConTeXt documents, the same would go for
processing ConTeXt into standardized ConTeXt documents. But the question is
too large not to ask.

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

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.


> 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?

ConTeXt, like every flavour of TeX, is a "text compiler" to PDF (and  
DVI, if that's really important for you). Professional, printable,  
presentable output. No more, no less.


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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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.

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.


 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?

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.

Regards,
John C. Haltiwanger

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Hans Hagen]

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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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
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                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

> 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.


There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's  
wrong with them?

• http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style
• http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter

Wolfgang

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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>
>  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


Okay, but that does imply that an organization can set up an environment and
expect its members to use it.


>
> 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


I'm not sure what you mean by a representation of a node list for a
paragraph (I am new to TeX, remember), but I am thinking more along the
lines of extracting Title, Author, and the content. Typesetting is not the
goal, as XML is for computers not people.


> 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)
>

The gain of XML is participation in the semantic web and concordance with
many new data keeping rules in governments and organizations.

 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)


 The input is actually a specific version of Word. This is converted to XML.
In the case of LaTeX, the LaTeX is converted to Word and then to XML.

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Hans Hagen]

John Haltiwanger wrote:

> Okay, but that does imply that an organization can set up an environment and
> expect its members to use it.

indeed, of seek help in doing so (not much different from setting up a 
housestyle for word ro whatever)

> I'm not sure what you mean by a representation of a node list for a
> paragraph (I am new to TeX, remember), but I am thinking more along the
> lines of extracting Title, Author, and the content. Typesetting is not the
> goal, as XML is for computers not people.

<glyph font='1' char='123'><kern width='1pt'><glyph font='1' char='456'>

etc .. the result of typeseting (kind of application xml which actually 
much of the xml around is)

> The gain of XML is participation in the semantic web and concordance with
> many new data keeping rules in governments and organizations.

that should happen with the source, ot the typeset result

- structured document in xml format
- rendering to the web using xslt and xhtml and css
- rendering for paper using tex
- analysing for whatever purpose using xml toolkits

>  The input is actually a specific version of Word. This is converted to XML.
> In the case of LaTeX, the LaTeX is converted to Word and then to XML.

i'd then go from latex directly to xml (given enough structure) but even 
workflows like word -> xml -> context are quite doable

Hans

ps most of our work here involves making styles and going from word/xml 
-> pdf (either or not reassembled) using context

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
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                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Wolfgang Schuster <
schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:

>
> Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:
>
>  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.
>>
>
>
> There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's wrong
> with them?
>
> • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style
> • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter
>
> Wolfgang
>

Thank you for those! I had not come across them yet. I was responding to
Henning's statement that "there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt
environments available". In fact I realize I had misread that until right
now, having missed the 'nearly' that qualifies the statement. Sorry for the
confusion.


Also, I don't want it to seem like I don't enjoy rolling my own documents.
While I'm new at it, I quite like interfacing with documents in this
'programming' way.

Thank you,
John C. Haltiwanger

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Mohamed Bana]

my personal favourite 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context/44368/focus=46254, beware 
you might have trouble getting that to compile with a new version of LuaTeX.

John Haltiwanger wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Wolfgang Schuster 
> <schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com 
> <mailto:schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:
> 
> 
>         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.
> 
> 
> 
>     There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's
>     wrong with them?
> 
>     • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style
>     • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter
> 
>     Wolfgang
> 
> 
> Thank you for those! I had not come across them yet. I was responding to 
> Henning's statement that "there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt 
> environments available". In fact I realize I had misread that until 
> right now, having missed the 'nearly' that qualifies the statement. 
> Sorry for the confusion.
> 
> 
> Also, I don't want it to seem like I don't enjoy rolling my own 
> documents. While I'm new at it, I quite like interfacing with documents 
> in this 'programming' way.
> 
> Thank you,
> John C. Haltiwanger
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> 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
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> 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.

  You're probably confused by the term "environment".  It means
something very specific in ConTeXt, see for example section 2.3 of
http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/cont-eni.pdf

  If by "environment" you mean some less down-to-earth, general document
layout, e.g. for articles, books, presentation slides or letters, then
yes, there are such ready-to-use layouts.  Not always in the ConTeXt
core, but they're there; for example, for letters you would use Wolfgang
Schuster's letter module; for presentation, one of the solutions is
Thomas Schmitz' and Aditya Mahajan's simple-presentation module, etc.

> Yes, I meant RDF. XML is a very important format. I find it odd that TeX can
> generate PDF but cannot output simple XML.

  Generating a document with a logical structure is really the opposite
of what TeX does, at least in my view: in today's trend, you write a TeX
document with a logical structure, and you generate PDF, a highly
specialized format for describing the layout of a printed or on-screen
page; it has rather few means of specifying logical structure (it's
coming, but rather poorly supported by PDF producer applications at the
moment).  The same is of course even more true of DVI.  Hence, what TeX
does is to take a logically structured document, and to make it into a
visually structured one.

  Note that I am not always convinced by the whole "separation of
content and layout" creed which is heard very often as a selling point
for LaTeX vs. MS Word etc., but there is some truth to it, and,
generally speaking, you're still going from semantic markup to visual
appearance, not the other way round.

>                                            So in order to have a semantical
> document I must write it in XML and then process it with ConTeXt?

  Pretty much.  ConTeXt is rather good at it.  You have a lot of tools
to process XML in the base code.  There is also a module to deal with
DocBook, but I think its development has stalled.

>                                                                   Is the
> capacity there (through LuaTeX perhaps) to write an XML generator?

  The goal is that at some point, you will be able to redefine LuaTeX's
backend, the same way you can act on the TeX engine at the moment.  This
will allow to control the output format entirely.

> While I would expect the reasons for wanting XML output would be obvious

  If I may, your statement might be biased by your own expectations.
There are thousand people out there who use some form of TeX without
even knowing about XML.  But I know why you want it.

  As far as LaTeX is concerned, there are quite a number of toolchains
that produce XML from some sort of restricted LaTeX markup.  I'm not
aware of anything similar for ConTeXt.

	Arthur
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Hans Hagen]

John Haltiwanger wrote:
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Wolfgang Schuster <
> schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:
>>
>>  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.
>>>
>>
>> There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's wrong
>> with them?
>>
>> • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style
>> • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter
>>
>> Wolfgang
>>
> 
> Thank you for those! I had not come across them yet. I was responding to
> Henning's statement that "there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt
> environments available". In fact I realize I had misread that until right
> now, having missed the 'nearly' that qualifies the statement. Sorry for the
> confusion.
> 
> 
> Also, I don't want it to seem like I don't enjoy rolling my own documents.
> While I'm new at it, I quite like interfacing with documents in this
> 'programming' way.

in tex/context/[base|third], take a look at:

m-* : specialized  modules
s-* : styles
x-* : xml relatex modules
t-* : third party modules



Hans

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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Thank you Arthur, Mohamed, and Hans for pointing me towards the available
modules.

As far as working towards semantical documents in TeX, I'll just have to
settle for writing external RDF descriptors for the documents. I'll take a
look at using XML as the source and feeding it into ConTeXt, but since I
rather like conTeXt's markup over XML, I'm not sure how likely I will be to
go that route. Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be
feasible,

Thanks everyone for being so helpful, speaks volumes about the community you
have here.

Regards,
John C. Haltiwanger

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Arthur Reutenauer]

>                Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be
> feasible,

  Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012,
but the backend features may be available sooner.  Many people are looking
forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-)
See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.

	Arthur
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Arthur Reutenauer <
arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:

> >                Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be
> > feasible,
>
>   Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012,
> but the backend features may be available sooner.  Many people are looking
> forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-)
> See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.
>

Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities
for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer
in the comments of this blog entry
http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html

Hopefully there can be found a way to incorporate these facilities in
ConTeXt and/or LuaTeX when they emerge.

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities
> for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer
> in the comments of this blog entry
> http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html

  If you mean Leonard Rosenthol's comment at
http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html?showComment=1239112800000#c5624378574116031944
the general issue is Tagged PDF.  It's not really supported yet in any
variant of TeX, but there is an active group working on it at River Valley
Technologies (http://lists.river-valley.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tex).
I haven't been following closely, but there's definitely progress.

	Arthur
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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Yes, that is the comment. Thank you for the heads up :)

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Arthur Reutenauer <
arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:

> > Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging
> facilities
> > for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe
> engineer
> > in the comments of this blog entry
> > http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html
>
>   If you mean Leonard Rosenthol's comment at
>
> http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html?showComment=1239112800000#c5624378574116031944
> the general issue is Tagged PDF.  It's not really supported yet in any
> variant of TeX, but there is an active group working on it at River Valley
> Technologies (http://lists.river-valley.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tex).
> I haven't been following closely, but there's definitely progress.
>
>        Arthur
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to
> the Wiki!
>
> maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl /
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>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Mon, 25 May 2009, John Haltiwanger wrote:

> unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I
> am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a

There are no standardized thesis styles for universities mainly because 
there are no consistent specs. Most univs want you to use times, double 
spaced lines, wide margins, and some formatting guidelines regarding the 
chapter headings, table of content, page headers and footers. Setting 
these are easy in ConTeXt (and also LaTeX if you know the relevant 
packages). Universities do not provide an official thesis style (either in 
LaTeX or ConTeXt) because in most cases they do not have the resources to 
maintain them. Students figure something out, and then pass along their 
styles to the next generation. If the formatting guidelines change, the 
burden is on the students to correct the style, rather than on the 
university.

When I was writing my thesis, it took me about a few hours to understand 
the formatting guidelines, which were a jigjaw puzzle. Statements like: 
Always use Times New Roman at 12pt as the main font. ... two pages down 
... The abstract can be in 10pt or 12pt ... a few pages later, use any of 
the standard fonts. It also used vague terminology. Statements like leave 
two blank lines after the title (blank lines, er... for what fontsize, the 
bodyfont or the title font?).

ConTeXt makes it really easy to make the formatting changes. Once I 
understood the formatting guidelines, writing the main style was very easy 
(with a few trips to the manual, and a few questions here on the mailing 
list). Making sure that the resultant style looked visually appealing 
while not violating the formatting guidelines too a lot of experimentation.

As Hans said, you can think of ConTeXt as the "standard" thesis 
style. Setup a few commands, and you meet your formatting requirements. 
Write it in an environment or a module, and you can reuse it.

Aditya
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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Thank you Aditya. All that makes sense to me. It is quite clear from
everyone's responses that the person on c.t.t who claimed ConTeXt is "only"
for one-offs was not correct.

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, 25 May 2009, John Haltiwanger wrote:
>
>  unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available.
>> I
>> am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or
>> a
>>
>
> There are no standardized thesis styles for universities mainly because
> there are no consistent specs. Most univs want you to use times, double
> spaced lines, wide margins, and some formatting guidelines regarding the
> chapter headings, table of content, page headers and footers. Setting these
> are easy in ConTeXt (and also LaTeX if you know the relevant packages).
> Universities do not provide an official thesis style (either in LaTeX or
> ConTeXt) because in most cases they do not have the resources to maintain
> them. Students figure something out, and then pass along their styles to the
> next generation. If the formatting guidelines change, the burden is on the
> students to correct the style, rather than on the university.
>
> When I was writing my thesis, it took me about a few hours to understand
> the formatting guidelines, which were a jigjaw puzzle. Statements like:
> Always use Times New Roman at 12pt as the main font. ... two pages down ...
> The abstract can be in 10pt or 12pt ... a few pages later, use any of the
> standard fonts. It also used vague terminology. Statements like leave two
> blank lines after the title (blank lines, er... for what fontsize, the
> bodyfont or the title font?).
>
> ConTeXt makes it really easy to make the formatting changes. Once I
> understood the formatting guidelines, writing the main style was very easy
> (with a few trips to the manual, and a few questions here on the mailing
> list). Making sure that the resultant style looked visually appealing while
> not violating the formatting guidelines too a lot of experimentation.
>
> As Hans said, you can think of ConTeXt as the "standard" thesis style.
> Setup a few commands, and you meet your formatting requirements. Write it in
> an environment or a module, and you can reuse it.
>
> Aditya
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> 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
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> archive  : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
> wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Hans Hagen]

John Haltiwanger wrote:
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Arthur Reutenauer <
> arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:
> 
>>>                Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be
>>> feasible,
>>   Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012,
>> but the backend features may be available sooner.  Many people are looking
>> forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-)
>> See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.
>>
> 
> Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities
> for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer
> in the comments of this blog entry
> http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html
> 
> Hopefully there can be found a way to incorporate these facilities in
> ConTeXt and/or LuaTeX when they emerge.

as it takes a bit of work i'll only look into it when i need it (in a 
project) or when i'm extremely bored; it's rather doable

Hans


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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Mohamed Bana]

i tend to write in Markdown, as the syntax is very light weight, then 
compile with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/).

$ pandoc --toc --smart --number-sections --standalone -H header.tex -w 
context file.pdc -o file.tex
$ texexec file.tex

i think Aditya has some documents floating around somewhere.

John Haltiwanger wrote:
> Thank you Arthur, Mohamed, and Hans for pointing me towards the 
> available modules.
> 
> As far as working towards semantical documents in TeX, I'll just have to 
> settle for writing external RDF descriptors for the documents. I'll take 
> a look at using XML as the source and feeding it into ConTeXt, but since 
> I rather like conTeXt's markup over XML, I'm not sure how likely I will 
> be to go that route. Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one 
> day be feasible,
> 
> Thanks everyone for being so helpful, speaks volumes about the community 
> you have here.
> 
> Regards,
> John C. Haltiwanger
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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> 
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

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Wow, that is handy! Thanks for the tip Modamed.

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Mohamed Bana <mbana.lists@googlemail.com>wrote:

> i tend to write in Markdown, as the syntax is very light weight, then
> compile with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/).
>
> $ pandoc --toc --smart --number-sections --standalone -H header.tex -w
> context file.pdc -o file.tex
> $ texexec file.tex
>
> i think Aditya has some documents floating around somewhere.
>
> John Haltiwanger wrote:
>
>> Thank you Arthur, Mohamed, and Hans for pointing me towards the available
>> modules.
>>
>> As far as working towards semantical documents in TeX, I'll just have to
>> settle for writing external RDF descriptors for the documents. I'll take a
>> look at using XML as the source and feeding it into ConTeXt, but since I
>> rather like conTeXt's markup over XML, I'm not sure how likely I will be to
>> go that route. Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be
>> feasible,
>>
>> Thanks everyone for being so helpful, speaks volumes about the community
>> you have here.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John C. Haltiwanger
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>> 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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>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[luigi scarso]

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On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> wrote:

> John Haltiwanger wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Arthur Reutenauer <
>> arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:
>>
>>                Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be
>>>> feasible,
>>>>
>>>  Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012,
>>> but the backend features may be available sooner.  Many people are
>>> looking
>>> forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-)
>>> See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.
>>>
>>>
>> Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging
>> facilities
>> for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe
>> engineer
>> in the comments of this blog entry
>> http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html
>>
>> Hopefully there can be found a way to incorporate these facilities in
>> ConTeXt and/or LuaTeX when they emerge.
>>
>
> as it takes a bit of work i'll only look into it when i need it (in a
> project) or when i'm extremely bored; it's rather doable
>
well , if you give us some hints maybe
someone will present an article at next context meeting ...
-- 
luigi

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Hans Hagen]

luigi scarso wrote:

> well , if you give us some hints maybe
> someone will present an article at next context meeting ...

(1) wait for the rewritten backend (next year)
(2) wait till structure in mkiv is stable

but indeed we can discuss these things at the upcoming context meeting

Hans


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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> well , if you give us some hints maybe
> someone will present an article at next context meeting ...

  If you're interested in Tagged PDF, you should really look into what
the River Valley guys are doing on the mailing-list I mentioned, and
contact Ross Moore, Han The Thanh, etc.

	http://lists.river-valley.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tex

		Arthur
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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Bruce D'Arcus]

Hans Hagen <pragma <at> wxs.nl> writes:

...

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

As Hans says, if you're interesting in integrating XML and RDF in source
documents, you need to think of ConTeXt as a lower-level output format; not the
other way around.

Depending on your needs, I'd consider two options for the source format: XHTML +
RDFa, and OpenDocument 1.2 (which will include RDF and RDFa support; likely to
be implemented first in OpenOffice 3.2). DocBook is an option too, but does not
AFAIK support RDFa.

In any case, I'd worry less about the technology, and more about what you need
from it. That will make it easier to figure out which approach is best.

Bruce



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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[John Haltiwanger]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 980 bytes --]

>
>
> In any case, I'd worry less about the technology, and more about what you
> need
> from it. That will make it easier to figure out which approach is best.
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc. The
desire for semantical documents sounds like it will be resolved sooner or
later with Tagged PDF. Until then the semantics can reside outside the PDF
in my case. I consider it only a "need" inasmuch as I am an archivist by
archetype, and so the idea of the best looking documents (the PDFs) being
also the most monolithic just goes against my natural grain. For now it is
not an urgency, but I do thank you all for the advice and comments!

The markdown solution is doubly good because now I see a way to incorporate
conTeXt in a web project that centers on language The better rendered the
text, the better the project. Ah, the universal adoption of TeX in
everything I do may not be far off ;)

Regards,

John C. Haltiwanger

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[luigi scarso]

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On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:26 PM, John Haltiwanger <
john.haltiwanger@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>>
>> In any case, I'd worry less about the technology, and more about what you
>> need
>> from it. That will make it easier to figure out which approach is best.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>>
> Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc.
>
Just a reminder to me for a sprint  in The Hague:
I think that Markdown can be parsed by context  mkiv with an ad hoc  lpeg


-- 
luigi

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 25.05.2009 um 22:25 schrieb Mohamed Bana:

> i tend to write in Markdown, as the syntax is very light weight,  
> then compile with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/).
>
> $ pandoc --toc --smart --number-sections --standalone -H header.tex - 
> w context file.pdc -o file.tex
> $ texexec file.tex

I think you can automate the first step with a ctx file and use only  
'texexec/context --ctx=pandoc' to create a pdf from your source file.

Wolfgang

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Re: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

[Bruce D'Arcus]

John Haltiwanger <john.haltiwanger <at> gmail.com> writes:

[...]

> Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc. 

Actually, you can embed the RDFa within the markdown files if you like. 

<div property="x:section">

# Introduction

Test.
</div>

Pandoc will just pass it on to the output XHTML (though throw it out for the
context). But it's admittedly a little awkward to have to wrap the markdown with
XHTML every time to want to add a triple.

Bruce

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