Re: State of documentation of ConTeXt?

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

On 7/14/2014 3:03 PM, Rob Heusdens wrote:
> Hello G / all
>
> I started using ConText about a year ago. But as a "novice" to Context
> (and Tex in general) I can say is that this would be the first thing to
> work on, because currently it is a bit of a pain to start using ConText in
> any serious way, because there is a lack of up-to-date documentation.
>
> The mailing list here does make a good contribution to explaining things
> (I did not use it before, but while the Contextgarden was offline for a
> while last week, this was the only place for getting needed info) that the
> documentation and contextgarden wiki misses.
>
> But I think a regular user would want to have up-to-date documentation,
> and many examples worked out and a whole bunch of ready to use (well
> documented) templates/start documents for all kinds of use-cases.
>
> The contextgarden wiki often does not provide well enough information.
>
> There are commands with over 20 different parameters, and the most of them
> are not documented at all. So, a novice user can only use the commands in
> a trivial sense, but for advanced use the command provides, there is no
> documentation on how it is supposed to work.
>
> This is a pitty, because the ConText distribution really offers a lot of
> features one want for avanced typesetting jobs, but too often one wants to
> understand the behaviour of some command or use the advanced options which
> are provided, but can't because the documenation is too poor to make sense
> of it.
>
> To look in the source is not a a good replacement for that I guess (only
> for advanced users which co-develop ConText).
>
> Well at least the mailing list provides the answers one wants, but it
> would be far better I guess if such information would be up-to-date on
> contexgarden.
>
> Can we make this a feature request with HIGH priority?

quite some sub-systems are described in their own manuals (fonts, 
tables, xml, ...) and these manuals are quite up to date (and easier to 
maintain than one big fat manual

also, additional documentation is something that users need to 
participate in (just pick a topic)

even if it has high priority, that doesn't mean that those involved have 
much free time left to do that next to their regular work (as usual most 
development is done in spare time)

so, patience is needed,

Hans

>> Hello guys,
>>
>> I am restarting a book project I started a several years back. At that
>> time I set up a copy of another project I am working on in ConTeXt, so
>> with the products/environment/chapters structure, added Mac fonts to my
>> setup, using texexec for compilation.
>>
>> Now that I am restarting, I am returning to ConTeXt. The first thing I did
>> was go to contextgarden and look for updated documentation. What I found
>> was the over 10-year old documentation (contextref.pdf) with green boxes
>> stating things like “TODO: Add some text about recent developments,
>> especially the split between mkii and mkiv”.
>>
>> Is there up-to-date and reasonably complete ConTeXt documentation these
>> days?
>>
>> G
>> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>> 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
>> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> 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
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
>


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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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___________________________________________________________________________________
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
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