A question for you

A question for you

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

Dear fellow gangsters,

I have a question for you all, recalling an exchange with John Culleton  
last fall:

http://www.ntg.nl/pipermail/ntg-context/2005/013498.html

In your views, what are the strengths and weaknesses of ConTeXt? For  
example, under what circumstances do you prefer to use a word processor  
(Word/OOo), a layout processor (InDesign), or just Plain(e)TeX over  
ConTeXt? (Actually the link above deals with Plain TeX but just in case  
you have anything to add).

In Maps 33-2005 Taco did an article based on our answers to the question,  
"What do you do with ConTeXt"? I would like to see the answers to the  
_opposite_ question:

Which typesetting tasks do you NOT do in ConTeXt, and what do you prefer  
to use for those tasks?

A corallary question:

What typesetting tasks do you find difficult-to-onerous in ConTeXt (even  
in nothing else is available)?

Your insights will be very much appreciated. I for one look forward to the  
day ConTeXt takes over the world!

Take care and all the

Best
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Re: A question for you

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2006-05-27 um 04:01 schrieb Idris Samawi Hamid:

> Which typesetting tasks do you NOT do in ConTeXt, and what do you  
> prefer
> to use for those tasks?

I use InDesign CS(2) for most of my print work, because...
- I do design for a living, and my colleagues and sometimes customers  
must be able to work with my data
- I mostly have irregular layouts that maybe possible, but very non- 
intuitive and uncomfortable in a command based way
- I seldom could use TeX's strong points (like toc, index,  
references, numbering etc.)
- most of my work is easier to do if I can see what I do (if not what  
I get)
- I still can't handle formula based graphics (MetaPost, PSTricks et  
al.)
- it handles image downsampling etc. for me (I often need different  
resolutions of the same layout)
- I hate QuarkXPress, PageMaker, CorelDraw et al.  ;-)

I use ConTeXt if the task is suitable for automation (e.g. my address  
book and planner calendar) or for text-centered books and I try to if  
I need the same content in different formats (e.g. presentation/ 
handout; songbook in A4 and planner format).

I normally never use word processors other than for text exchange - I  
write letters and invoices in InDesign, even if I try to switch to  
ConTeXt for that.

One of my last projects (a book on steam engineering) contained a lot  
of formulae; I would have done it with ConTeXt, but the customer  
wanted to get editable "WYSIWYG" data, so I used ID again. On the one  
hand it was tedious (math accents are difficult with such a program),  
on the other hand I finally could try ID's book features that worked  
rather well for me.

> A corallary question:
>
> What typesetting tasks do you find difficult-to-onerous in ConTeXt  
> (even
> in nothing else is available)?

- It's hard to understand how the layout parameters influence each other
- There are often situations in which I can't understand why  
something doesn't work (e.g. named buffers in layers, where nameless  
buffers work)
- It's hard to understand or track down, if/why some fonts aren't found
- some documentation is hard to find (if present at all); esp. if  
plain TeX commands are involved
- I never understand, when (de)activation of elements (logos,  
layers...) works or why not

Everything is hard if you're not used to it...


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://contextgarden.net
http://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

Re: A question for you

[gnwiii]

On 5/26/06, Idris Samawi Hamid <ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:

> Which typesetting tasks do you NOT do in ConTeXt, and what do you prefer
> to use for those tasks?

I'm involved with a report series for a small scientific organization.
 Years ago the organization hired a designer who knew PageMaker.  A
couple reports were done in PM, but the next one had losts of math and
a plain TeX version of the MS.  We used ConTeXt to duplicate his
design, with better results than you can get from PM.  Meanwhile,
other authors want to use LaTeX, the  designer moved on, and the
organization couldn't find a contractor willing to learn ConTeXt, so I
ended up creating a LaTeX style.

My feeling is that ConTeXt is good for creating one-off designs, but
for scientific work LaTeX is unavoidable.  Few people are willing to
invest time in ConTeXt when they are already familiar with LaTeX and
use it routinely for journal articles, proceedings, etc.  In
particular, it is easy to cut and paste equations between reports and
articles.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia

Re: A question for you

[Taco Hoekwater]

Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
> 
> Which typesetting tasks do you NOT do in ConTeXt, and what do you prefer  
> to use for those tasks?

I do not use ConTeXt for letters and invoices. I guess I could, but
I see little point, since I do not really care about how they look
as long as can get my point (or required payment ;-)) across to the
reader. And writing letters is simply easier in a word processor.

And for web programming I use plain pdfTeX to create auto-generated
PDF because it is both faster in processing and easier to trim down
the distribution.


> A corallary question:
> 
> What typesetting tasks do you find difficult-to-onerous in ConTeXt (even  
> in nothing else is available)?

I dearly miss page templates a la framemaker. I am not sure if ID can
do that (we have CS2, but I never can find the time to give it a
thorough testing).

Cheers, Taco

Re: A question for you

[nico]

On Fri, 26 May 2006 20:01:57 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid  
<ishamid@colostate.edu> wrote:

> Which typesetting tasks do you NOT do in ConTeXt, and what do you prefer
> to use for those tasks?

I don't use context for any technical documentation that requires several  
output formats (HTML, PDF, troff for manpages), and i use DocBook instead,  
well suited for a wide range of transformation.

This said, I now uses context as backend typesetting engine to convert the  
DocBook documents into PDF. I can then control the (high quality) output  
rendering, what I cannot do with XSL FO based transformation, and I don't  
need java neither (required to process FO, unless you use foxet, maybe).

> What typesetting tasks do you find difficult-to-onerous in ConTeXt (even
> in nothing else is available)?

Common documents exchanged with colleagues (who have falled into the dark  
side of MS wor(l)d).

BTW, I think that the biggest limitation to have context more used is the  
installation difficulties: too many dependencies to update by hand (tetex,  
LM fonts, launching scripts, config files), no standard installation (what  
about having one day something like a "configure; make install"), no  
packaging à la RPM, apt-get, or portinstall. Of course, once done,  
upgrading the context release is not a big deal, but the first step is not  
obvious. It's the only explanation I've found why latex is so popular;  
knowing a bit more the context interface and features I now look latex as  
a stone age tex macro package.

Regards,
BG

Re: A question for you

[Peter Münster]

On Fri, 26 May 2006, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

> Which typesetting tasks do you NOT do in ConTeXt, and what do you prefer  
> to use for those tasks?

Hello Idris,
for writing letters I still use LaTeX + lettre.cls or scrlttr2.cls. One
interesting feature is the automatic vertical stretching or compressing in
order to get the last page well filled (say at least 30% or so).
One day, I'm going to write something like this for ConTeXt perhaps.

I've never used anything else than LaTeX or ConTeXt, and I don't feel any
need to change.

> What typesetting tasks do you find difficult-to-onerous in ConTeXt (even  
> in nothing else is available)?

Tables: first, it's difficult to choose between the 3 possibilities (table,
tabulate and TABLE), and then sometimes there is no table with all features
that I need.
Pretty-verbatim: in LaTeX I loved the listings package. There are some
possibilities in ConTeXt, but the listings package is still far better: a
lot more options and easier to use.
All other problems are in the "collector".

Cheers, Peter

-- 
http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/

Re: A question for you

[Peter Münster]

On Sun, 28 May 2006, nico wrote:

> BTW, I think that the biggest limitation to have context more used is the  
> installation difficulties: too many dependencies to update by hand (tetex,  
> LM fonts, launching scripts, config files), no standard installation

Hello Nico,
don't worry, in about 1 or 2 months, I'll provide an rpm-package (I need it
for myself).
Cheers, Peter

-- 
http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/