Re: ConTeXt and critical editions

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 02:01 PM 3/15/2002 -0700, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

>The 4TeX manual (please freely release part IV!) says "CONTE XT is fully 
>compatible with PlainTEX". Is this meant that ConTeXt is compatible with 
>Plain TeX ways that LaTeX (which redefines or
>obliterates some PlainTeX) commands is not?

You can devide plain tex in several parts:

(1) housekeeping

normally not needed by users, but the \new... commands are there (although 
they adapt to tex/etex)

(2) math

plain math is supposed to work as expected

(3) fonts

context has its own font system, but \rm \bf etc are supposed to work

(4) otr

context has its own otr, but it's not that hard to set up a layout that 
matches plains dimensions, although it's 'work inprogress' there is a more 
of less abstract otr interface where you can plug in your own otr

(5) plain sectioning, verbatim, etc

these plain commands do not make sense in a context like environment

(6) tables

should work, but context provides three alternatives methods

>Is the ConTeXt output routine more easily accessed/modified? Will it be 
>easier to port EDMAC to ConTeXt than to LaTeX (which I have wanted to do 4
>some time) or vice versa?

depends on what the spec is; what exactly does edmac provide? is there a 
more or less specification + examples?

>P.S. Did I mention that part IV of the 4TeX manual should be _freely_ 
>rereleasd? It's an excellent intro to Plain, LaTeX, and ConTeXt and 
>deserves a greater audience, placement on CTAN, TeXLive,
>tug.org....

There are some thoughts about that (more later this year)

Hans
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