About Latex compatibility module

About Latex compatibility module

[Jairo A. del Rio]

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Hi everyone! I was reading some old posts on TeX.SX about LaTeX support on
ConTeXt and I found the following:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110822085249/https://modules.contextgarden.net/LaTeX

However, not only the module seems to be deprecated, but there's no more
info about the module now (links are broken and the like). Btw the test
file (latextest.tex) included fails to compile:

> tex error on line 165 in file t-ltmsen.tex: ! Undefined control sequence
>> \newskip\@rightskip \@rightskip \z@skip

Is it possible to make it work? I think it would be nice if some minimal
LaTeX macros were supported. Thank you in advance!

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Re: About Latex compatibility module

[Hans Hagen]

On 5/24/2020 1:43 AM, Jairo A. del Rio wrote:
> Hi everyone! I was reading some old posts on TeX.SX about LaTeX support 
> on ConTeXt and I found the following:
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20110822085249/https://modules.contextgarden.net/LaTeX
> 
> However, not only the module seems to be deprecated, but there's no more 
> info about the module now (links are broken and the like). Btw the test 
> file (latextest.tex) included fails to compile:
> 
>  > tex error on line 165 in file t-ltmsen.tex: ! Undefined control sequence
> 
>  >> \newskip\@rightskip \@rightskip \z@skip

looks like someplace one has to define \z@skip to be 0pt (in this case 
it's actually redundant code because a newskip is likely to be zero)

> Is it possible to make it work? I think it would be nice if some minimal 
> LaTeX macros were supported. Thank you in advance!
Depends. It's not that hard to define some basic 'handle some latex 
cases' module but the question is "for what purpose?". When I look at 
those decade old files in that archive I see a lot of messy code that 
one needs to isolate and even then we can assume that users use more 
than a few commands. When they only use the top-ten commands, no 
problem, but when they start setting lengths or so ... why use context 
then. I have no problem mapping a few commands so that new users can 
cut-n-paste some code as a starter but somehoen has to come up with the 
list of commands and minimal test files then.

Apart from the (probably a bit boring) challenge I think it doesn't pay 
off. Also, the systems are conceptually too different I think.

Hans

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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Re: About Latex compatibility module

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Hans Hagen schrieb am 25.05.2020 um 17:54:
> On 5/24/2020 1:43 AM, Jairo A. del Rio wrote:
>> Hi everyone! I was reading some old posts on TeX.SX about LaTeX 
>> support on ConTeXt and I found the following:
>>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20110822085249/https://modules.contextgarden.net/LaTeX 
>>
>>
>> However, not only the module seems to be deprecated, but there's no 
>> more info about the module now (links are broken and the like). Btw 
>> the test file (latextest.tex) included fails to compile:
>>
>>  > tex error on line 165 in file t-ltmsen.tex: ! Undefined control 
>> sequence
>>
>>  >> \newskip\@rightskip \@rightskip \z@skip
> 
> looks like someplace one has to define \z@skip to be 0pt (in this case 
> it's actually redundant code because a newskip is likely to be zero)

In many cases one can replace the old name with @ with current names, 
e.g. \z@skip will become \zeroskip.

>> Is it possible to make it work? I think it would be nice if some 
>> minimal LaTeX macros were supported. Thank you in advance!
> Depends. It's not that hard to define some basic 'handle some latex 
> cases' module but the question is "for what purpose?". When I look at 
> those decade old files in that archive I see a lot of messy code that 
> one needs to isolate and even then we can assume that users use more 
> than a few commands. When they only use the top-ten commands, no 
> problem, but when they start setting lengths or so ... why use context 
> then. I have no problem mapping a few commands so that new users can 
> cut-n-paste some code as a starter but somehoen has to come up with the 
> list of commands and minimal test files then.
> 
> Apart from the (probably a bit boring) challenge I think it doesn't pay 
> off. Also, the systems are conceptually too different I think.

In the end you have to port the base commands of LaTeX which includes

- lists
- floats
- references
- font switches
- math
- etc.

and just another one (and another one ...).

It's just not worth the effort and we should spend the time to improve 
ConTeXt and add missing features.

Wolfgang
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