Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Sanjoy Mahajan <sanjoy@mrao.cam.ac.uk>]

> > Can TeX/LaTeX/ConTexT-based typesetting can look as good?  Perhaps!

> I'm curious: What is preventing ConTeXt in particular from looking
> this good?  What is the basis of your "Perhaps!"? What's missing?

Mostly my lack of skill with ConTeXt, but the experts could say for
sure.  A likely trouble spot is automatic figure placement.
Positioning involves compromising competing criteria: keep figures
next to the text that references them (the ideal), but it may not fit.
So failing that, keep it on the same page, or at least on the same
double-page spread.  Otherwise, on the next page.  

But where you put one figure will affect the placement of later
figures.  And maybe you paint yourself into a corner, and would like
to backtrack and sacrifice excellent earlier placements in order to
minimize terrible placements now...

So the engine should typeset a document one chapter at a time (figures
should never cross chapter boundaries).  TeX does "one page and a bit"
at a time, so fully automatic placement is difficult to program (and
always tricky to use since it involves lots of hinting).

Instead of doing it automatically, you can give a lot of help to the
program, which is probably what you have to do with Quark.

-Sanjoy

`Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.'
         --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.