newbie questions

["Sanja C." <sanjac@rocketmail.com>]

Hi ConTeXt community.

While looking for free (preferably open-source) tools which I could use for 
typesetting a planned internal newsletter-booklet for a non-profit organization 
(to be released in printed form in regular intervals - each issue with new 
content of course, but same/similar style), I came across ConTeXt.

I usually use Inkscape and various WYSIWYG word processing software for 
designing and layouting flyers/leaflets/etc., but in this case (many pages, 
varying and regularly updated content, consistent style) I'm afraid those tools 
simply don't cut in in terms of professional-quality typesetting capabilities 
and content//style separation.

So programmatic typesetting might be the answer. I thought of LaTeX first, but I 
read from various sources that using ConTeXt might be easier for typesetting 
book-like things, especially if you want to design your own styles.

Before I delve in deeper, though, I would like to ask you (the ConTeXt 
community) some questions:

a) Is the ConTeXt project alive? The newest PDF documentation I could find seems 
to be from 2007; most of it is dated 2003 or older.

b) Do you think that ConTeXt is an appropriate tool for the use case I described 
(be honest please ;-)), and easy enough to learn for someone with almost no TeX 
experience?
The requirements are:
  - Support for elaborate, colorful, graphics-heavy design, which I would 
preferably create in Inkscape and then export as vector graphics (or port to 
ConTeXt's own graphics language) as necessary.
 - Ability to write a style *once* (with reasonable effort), and "outsource" it 
to an external file (or files), so that for each new release of the newsletter, 
only a simple content TeX file (or files) with minimal amount of markup is 
required (which e.g. even a non-tech-savvy writer/editor could edit)
 - Ability to easily include pictures in the content, and let the typesetting 
engine automatically position them (either in the main text area with text 
floating around them, or in special margin areas).

c) Are there any full-featured examples of design-heavy booklets/magazines/etc 
created with ConTeXt., for which the full source code is publicly available? 
That would be *really* helpful in order to assess how much work would be 
required, and also to learn how exactly it's done in practice.

Thanks!

  Sanja C.

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