Re: New Member Introductory Rant

["Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Corin Royal Drummond wrote:
> Hello ConTeXt Users,
>
>  I have become obsessed with ConTeXt since I found out about it while
>  browsing through the TeX related software on my Ubuntu Linux box.  I've
>  been teaching myself web development in XHTML/CSS over the last couple
>  years, and developed a passion for structured documents that separate
>  presentation as much as possible.  I'm starting to setup Drupal CMS
>  installations for some friends in preparation for doing web publishing
>  work for clients.  It's been fun to learn, but so frustrating and
>  difficult for my poor mind.
>
>  I've long been curious about TeX but it seemed too ossified, fragmented,
>  inflexible, and hard to learn.  Later I discovered LyX and understood
>  implicitly the style based markup idea, and it's power.  I've always
>  hated things like word, open office, and DTP programs.  I'm fine doing
>  the GUI for PhotoShop, but somehow I feel I should be able to just type
>  text, and have it come out all pretty.  ConTeXt seems to share that
>  philosophy, so I'm giddy about it.  I suppose I should learn InDesign
>  too, but I don't really want to.  I use a text editor for my web coding
>  rather than dragging boxes around in DreamWeaver.  I like that I can
>  just cut & paste other people's code and learn what they did.  GUI
>  programs are harder to learn in that way since someone has to write a
>  whole step-by-step tutorial rather than just show you their commented
>  code.
>
>  I'm using Scite as my editor, but I haven't set it up anyway special.

Hans has a relatively good Scite setup on Windows that is probably not
included into standard Scite, and probably not available anywhere as a
separate package either. (If you want, you can take a look at
http://www.pragma-ade.com/context/install/mswincontext.zip. There are
quite some files for better Scite support, you only need to figure out
which files you need. In case that you do that, please share your
experience with others.)

>  Kile didn't seem to
>  like ConTeXt much, and it's command completion facility kept spitting
>  out LaTeX code as I typed.  I like Scite as it starts fast, has nice
>  colors, and is easy to get around.

A few months ago some ConTeXt support has been added to Kile. Maybe
upgrading would help (But I never use Kile, so I cannot say for sure).

>  TexFont doesn't work on Ubuntu.  It craps out saying it can't find it's
>  TeX root.  Even when I set the FontRoot with the command line switch, it
>  fails to find it's map files.  I filed a bug with Ubuntu about it as it
>  seems like some files like the font maps got put in /var/lib.  So I'm
>  completely frustrated by the font situation.  Don't understand why I
>  can't just point TexFont at my directory of OTF, TTF, and PFB fonts and
>  have it suck up every last glyph and variant like Scribus, InkScape, and
>  InDesign do.  It should configure a reasonable set of typescripts, and
>  tell me what's available.  All the other TeX fonts should just work out
>  of the box.  Why do I have to wrestle so vainly just to get the damn
>  fonts to be available.

TeXFont is full of "non-heavily-tested-functionality", which means
that it sometimes works on one platform, but fails on the other. I
have tried to use it in past, but then I gave up.
The problem is that even though it might need fixes, it is now
obsolete since the arrival of LuaTeX. I don't want to say that it's
useless, just that Hans probably prefers to spend his time improving
LuaTeX support than keeping that old stuff work.

TexFont is written in Perl - if you have some fixes to suggest (in
form of patches), go ahead.

But I would rather suggest to switch to XeTeX or LuaTeX if you need
more advanced fonts. It will make your life much easier.

>  Also, I can't for the life of me figure out how to change typefaces in
>  headers and footers.  I can change to italics, or sizes with style=\it\x
>  but have no clue how to switch a header to say the Zaph Chancery
>  caligraphic.  I can switch the body font to it, so I'm part way there.

Use
    style={\switchtobodyfont[...]}
... = the same name & size as you use in \setupbodyfont[...]

>  I'm pretty pissed off about the state of the documentation for ConTeXt.
>  Out of date docs, that were never finished, and full of holes.  Small
>  set of MyWay articles,

Waiting for others to make new ones ... :)

>  old dead links on the wiki,

Just send a list of them (if you don't know where they should point)
or simply fix them ... That's why wiki is there for.

>  no roadmap,

There might be no roadmap written anywhere explicitly, but Hans has a
more clear vision in his head than 95% of any other open-source
developers. The fact that it is not written anywhere (take a look at
mk.pdf on Pragma or LuaTeX roadmap or mplib ideas) doesn't mean that
there is none. Hans's and Taco's conference talks always have
something impressive ideas to show even for those who follow the
development closely.

Most open source programs write a roadmap and then you see statements
like "we plan to write utf-8 support" standing on their web pages
forever. Hans simply *does* everything, often "hidden" form users'
eyes. (In the sense "users should not bother", rather than "user
should not see".) So you wouldn't even notice that things have changed
apart from the fact that ConTeXt documents compile ten times faster
than they did several years ago, and that you can now use OpenType
fonts without any problem ... any many other little details.

Omega had a clear roadmap and clear idea what it wanted to achieve.
However, the ideas have remained on paper.

> no bug database.

There has been one, but it turned out that resolving bugs through the
mailing list has been more efficient, and Hans never took time to
browse through that database. Moreover, when someone reports a bug,
it's great if he can test if it works OK again. In the bug database
authors usually get lost. I don't say that bug database is a bad
thing. But a volunteer to maintain it is needed. (That used to be Taco
for some time.)

Also, a "stable version of ConTeXt" is needed. However, unlikely that
Hans is going to make one. If there was some volunteer to:
- take some version of ConTeXt once or twice per year
- check new versions of ConTeXt and then check for every change if
it's a new feature or a bugfix
- only apply bugfixes to the "stable" version
- or even simply check every change if it's safe or not, and prepare
some test documents to check them
then this would be a welcome contribution.

>  It's 2008, there's things like SourceForge,

Yesterday I have heard an interesting thought:
    "When projects are put on SourceForge, that's usually the first
step towards their death." (When people star thinking that putting
their projects on SourceForge will simplify others contributing to it
as they have less time for development.)

Even though it's not connected to the question you had, the sentence
above might not be so far away from truth in many cases (not all of
them of course).

>  and LaunchPad for
>  these sort of things.  I don't understand why Pragma can't sell support
>  for ConTeXt like other open source projects.  That way Hans can afford a
>  staff to handle people's questions,

In case that you need professional support from Pragma, simply contact
Hans. He already works on different projects for different clients. If
it would turn out that more people are needed, he would probably
already hire more people, but Hans is a multi-threading, super-machine
who can program several times faster than others, and he can still
cope with what he has now.

In contrast to OpenOffice or Firefox, ConTeXt has a much smaller user
base. If there was some usable user-interface behind (in front of)
TeX, it would have probably been another story.

>  he can focus on building what he likes (and we all love),

He already does that :)

>  new users can be brought in, and a virtuous
>  cycle of new contributors, new features, and new users.

New users already have this mailing list and new features more often
come from Hans than from external contributors. People come to TeX for
many different reasons, but most of them are not willing to pay for it
(or at least come to TeX exactly for that reason - because it's both
free and enables high-quality typesetting).

Those who are willing to pay for support can always make a contract with Pragma.

>  TexShow is missing tons of commands I've read about in the manual,

It will get improved in a foreseeable future.

>  and
>  doesn't bother to explain what any command or option does.

Someone has to explain that. There is texshow.contextgarden.net
waiting for people to fill in the descriptions. The current version is
a bit buggy, but will be improved soon.

>  Nor do I
>  understand how options are chained or structured into more than simple
>  switches.

What exactly do you mean? Many options are a bit tricky indeed, but
after reading the manual, one can get some feeling of what is
possible.

>  Where are the screencasts of gurus showing off how to do cool
>  things?

Hans's manuals are in svn repository (I forgot the location, but can check).
There is no showcase, making one would be nice.

>  Where are the tutorials?  Where are the contributed templates,
>  so I can read other people's code to learn from?  You'd think that
>  people who make structured document typesetting systems would spend some
>  more time on their documentation.

I don't know the English version of it (there must be one - if anyone
knows it, I would be glad to hear it), but we have a nice saying,
literally translated as:
    "Farrier's own mare is always barefoot."

>  I'd be glad to help, but first I'd need to learn the system.  Since the
>  docs are so incomplete, I'm not sure how I'd do that.  Catch 22.

By reading the source :)
Joking of course ... but not entirely.

>  And if any one wants help setting up a better community website, I could
>  help with that, knowing Drupal.

What exactly do you have in mind? What's your plan? Things can be put
on contextgarden (once I get the licence to login again :) if needed.
Ideas are welcome :)
There is wiki, but it has been sleeping for quite some time now. If
you have ideas how to make more people into contributing, we would all
be more than happy.

Mojca
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