* Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up
@ 2013-06-14 5:19 Malte Stien
2013-06-14 7:17 ` luigi scarso
` (2 more replies)
0 siblings, 3 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Malte Stien @ 2013-06-14 5:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users
Hello Everyone,
I have been using ConTeXt for over a year now and worked out how to do most things I need to do. Every now and then, though, I need to do something that I cannot find any information about and in most cases I post a question here on the forum. I have received great help here over the months and like to thank everyone who took the time to answer my questions. The other day, however, I had a problem, posted a message here, got an answer and the answer did not quite work; I went back to the forum, got more help...
In the process I realised that I should have been able to work this out myself; I was not even able to tweak the first answer and make it work. I am an IT engineer myself, but with little time (I guess I am not unique here) and even less experience in TeX. I guess what I am saying is, that I would like to gain a much deeper understanding of ConTeXt which will allow me to "program" in ConTeXt rather than just using the documented command.
To gather information about ConTeXt I have
- read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf)
- bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen
- started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth
I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX mainly because it would mean having a lot more literature and a broader community at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command structure and output of ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am I on the right track? What else should I be doing or reading to really break into ConTeXt?
Regards,
Malte.
PS: Just to be clear; I don't mean for the above to be conceived as shortcomings of ConTeXt, rather I think of them as shortcomings of myself. The developers of ConTeXt have done a fantastic job and I really enjoy writing in ConTeXt and looking at the output.
--
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread* Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up 2013-06-14 5:19 Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up Malte Stien @ 2013-06-14 7:17 ` luigi scarso 2013-06-14 7:46 ` Hans Hagen 2013-06-14 7:41 ` Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. 2013-06-16 8:56 ` Dmitriy Tokarev 2 siblings, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread From: luigi scarso @ 2013-06-14 7:17 UTC (permalink / raw) To: mailing list for ConTeXt users [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 973 bytes --] On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de> wrote: > > To gather information about ConTeXt I have > - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf) > - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen > - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth > > I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX mainly > because it would mean having a lot more literature and a broader community > at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command structure and output of > ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am I on the right track? What > else should I be doing or reading to really break into ConTeXt? > > you have missed - read the source Take a problem, grep the source see how Hans addresses the problem. There are examples on how to use a feature that sometime are not explained in manuals. I think that here mkiv is better than latex (oh, well, after all it's the context ml , right ?). -- luigi [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 1657 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 485 bytes --] ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up 2013-06-14 7:17 ` luigi scarso @ 2013-06-14 7:46 ` Hans Hagen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread From: Hans Hagen @ 2013-06-14 7:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: ntg-context On 6/14/2013 9:17 AM, luigi scarso wrote: > > > > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de > <mailto:malte@stien.de>> wrote: > > > To gather information about ConTeXt I have > - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf) > - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen > - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth > > > I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX > mainly because it would mean having a lot more literature and a > broader community at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command > structure and output of ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am > I on the right track? What else should I be doing or reading to > really break into ConTeXt? > > > you have missed > - read the source > Take a problem, grep the source see how Hans addresses the problem. > There are examples on how to use a feature that sometime are not > explained in manuals. other resources: - the wiki - the test suite (lots of small examples) - modules by (e.g. wolfgangs modules are mkiv compliant) - maybe examples on stack exchange (there are nice ones there) - sites like http://randomdeterminism.wordpress.com and probably more Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl ----------------------------------------------------------------- ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up 2013-06-14 5:19 Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up Malte Stien 2013-06-14 7:17 ` luigi scarso @ 2013-06-14 7:41 ` Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. 2013-06-16 8:56 ` Dmitriy Tokarev 2 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread From: Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. @ 2013-06-14 7:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: mailing list for ConTeXt users Hello, On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 07:19:44 +0200, Malte Stien <malte@stien.de> wrote: > Hello Everyone, > > I have been using ConTeXt for over a year now and worked out how to do most things I need to do. Every now and then, though, I need to do something that I cannot find any information about and in most cases I post a question here on the forum. I have received great help here over the months and like to thank everyone who took the time to answer my questions. The other day, however, I had a problem, posted a message here, got an answer and the answer did not quite work; I went back to the forum, got more help... > > In the process I realised that I should have been able to work this out myself; I was not even able to tweak the first answer and make it work. I am an IT engineer myself, but with little time (I guess I am not unique here) and even less experience in TeX. I guess what I am saying is, that I would like to gain a much deeper understanding of ConTeXt which will allow me to "program" in ConTeXt rather than just using the documented command. > > To gather information about ConTeXt I have > - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf) > - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen > - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth this is a normal approach - questioning, searching for answers... It's the same for ConTeXt as for LaTeX. Personally, I started with Ltx and migrated to Ctx some years ago. Big advantages of Ctx are: - This forum is very alive, almost all questions are answered in short time. - Ctx document is much more customizable by standard Ctx commands, i.e. - compared with Ltx - you don't need to go in the Ltx source and investigate how to do this-or-that. Ltx seems to me a bit "rigid" - it's not so easy to change style of heads, special paragraphs, enumerations, ... - Ctx is still developed; AFAIK Ltx ver. 3.? is being prepared/issued several (- at least 5 -) years. - Ctx: Some features - if they seem useful - may be implemented "on-demand", so they may be ready to use with a next beta (thanks mainly Hans; as well as Wolfgand, Aditya...). - Although Ctx wiki is not best manual one could imagine, (pros:) it is still maintained and developed (cons: some info may be obsolete, some articles may be written in old-style fashion...) - Ltx: I don't know how far Ltx is bound with Lua and how this relation is documented; I guess poorly. As Ctx is concerned, many (almost all?) things of TeX/Ctx core may be accessible/hookable by Lua - this is a great feature; and IMHO: as if you are "normal" programmer, programming by Lua should be much more quicker for you than doing things by TeX macro language. So, my personal advice would be - try to stay with Ctx, I believe after some initial problems/obstacles you'll be becoming "master" and Ctx will become a good "slave". Best regards, Lukas > I have even briefly flirted with the idea of switching to LaTeX mainly because it would mean having a lot more literature and a broader community at my disposal. However, I just prefer the command structure and output of ConTeXt. Can anyone relate to my problem? Am I on the right track? What else should I be doing or reading to really break into ConTeXt? > > Regards, > Malte. > > PS: Just to be clear; I don't mean for the above to be conceived as shortcomings of ConTeXt, rather I think of them as shortcomings of myself. The developers of ConTeXt have done a fantastic job and I really enjoy writing in ConTeXt and looking at the output. > -- Ing. Lukáš Procházka [mailto:LPr@pontex.cz] Pontex s. r. o. [mailto:pontex@pontex.cz] [http://www.pontex.cz] Bezová 1658 147 14 Praha 4 Tel: +420 244 062 238 Fax: +420 244 461 038 ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up 2013-06-14 5:19 Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up Malte Stien 2013-06-14 7:17 ` luigi scarso 2013-06-14 7:41 ` Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. @ 2013-06-16 8:56 ` Dmitriy Tokarev 2 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread From: Dmitriy Tokarev @ 2013-06-16 8:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: mailing list for ConTeXt users > To gather information about ConTeXt I have > - read the ConTeXt Reference Manual (http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf) > - bought a couple of the published books by Hans Hagen > - started reading the "TeX book" by Donald Knuth In addition to the "TeX book" you might be interested in "TeX for the Impatient": http://www.ctan.org/pkg/impatient see top of p.8 for recommendations for reading. -- Dmitriy ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2013-06-16 8:56 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 5+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2013-06-14 5:19 Learning ConTeXt from the Ground Up Malte Stien 2013-06-14 7:17 ` luigi scarso 2013-06-14 7:46 ` Hans Hagen 2013-06-14 7:41 ` Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. 2013-06-16 8:56 ` Dmitriy Tokarev
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