Re: cont-enp.pdf on lulu

[Gerben Wierda <Gerben.Wierda@rna.nl>]

On Jul 26, 2008, at 1:31 AM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

> The sources are very well documented in the most
> part. But then, that is not user interface documentation, it is code
> documentation

Exactly. Let's give a simple example. My project needs both footnotes  
and endnotes. For footnotes I have

\setupfootnotes[conversion=set 2,way=bypage]

in my environment file. For endnotes, I use \endnote and

\placenotes[endnote]

in a separate chapter in \backmatter. When I asked Hans in 2005 if  
footnotes and endnotes together were possible he finished a part of  
ConTeXt that was not quite done and after some testing it ended up in  
ConTeXt. This is how it works.

What I would like now is to get my end notes per chapter at the end of  
the chapter (because I want to work on my project per chapter and make  
per-chapter pdf-files I can send to people). I have been looking for  
documentation on endnotes. The term still does not appear in any  
official ConTeXt manual, not on the ConTeXt wiki.  So, \endnote and  
\placenotes[endnote] have been there for *years*. But there is *no*  
mention of it anywhere. For fun: try googling for "endnote placenote".

So, let's look at the well documented code then

\def\dodoflushnotes % per class, todo: handle endnotes here
   {\ifdim\ht\localpostponednotes>\zeropoint
      \bgroup
      \dochecknote
      \ifendnotes \else

;-) Seriously, do you really expect ordinary users to look at the code  
of ConTeXt to find out how things can be done? I think nobody thinks  
that.

Also funny: Look at what the wiki tells me about \setupfootnotes: http://texshow.contextgarden.net/cmd/setupfootnotes 
. How should a simple user like myself ever find out that the above is  
possible reading the table in the wiki? And who else than ConTeXt  
developers can write this? Or is it the idea that many people reverse  
engineer what ConTeXt does and fill a Wiki that way?

So, what we have is Hans' and Taco's (and maybe some others) swiss  
army knife under development. WIth LuaTeX and MKIV all efforts go into  
the development of the entirely new engine and all the technical know  
how on the inside. My expectation is that the situation with respect  
to user documentation is not going to improve soon.

G
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