Re: Typesetting Math

[Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu>]

On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Pepe Barbe wrote:

> I am curious about what does everyone around here uses for typesetting
> Math?

Context, of course ;)

> Currently I know more LaTeX than anything else for that, but
> from what I gather to use ConTeXt in full extent I should typeset
> things directly in TeX or use MathML.

Not any more. Context has full blown support for most math constructs.


> So far I've been some LaTeX-like stuff and it was worked fine, but
> know I want to do more complet layouts that would involve LaTeX style
> arrays to align equations in several lines.

Context can do many complicated alignments. Right now Context has 
features equivalent to following latex environments

equation, align, gather, alignat, falignat, array, cases, intertext, 
substack, matrix, pmatrix, bmatrix, vmatrix, Vmatrix, all sorts of 
arrows,

it has partial support for

aligned, gathered,

it has experimental support for

subformulas, tagging, breaking formulas across pages

(Context's native way of doing subformulas is a bit different from 
latex's. Search the ML archives for something that works like latex's 
subformulas. Breaking formulas across pages is a bit tricky, since it 
is not clear what is the right place for a pagebreak in a display. 
Right now, Context can either do no break at all, or break at any 
line.)

it has no support for

smallmatrix, multiline, many small amstex enhancements.

Most of the amstex enhancements are simple, and it is easy to add 
support for them. Right now, support is based on user requests, so if 
you want something equivalent to latex's xyz, explain what it does, 
and context will have that feature. What more can you ask for?

For a bit of documentation have a look at

http://dl.contextgarden.net/myway/mathalign.pdf

and

http://dl.contextgarden.net/myway/matharrows.pdf

There is also some explaination at 
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Math_structures


> So, what would you guys would recommend?

Start using context math. The syntax is a bit different from the way 
latex does things, but as in other things with context, the syntax 
makes configuration really easy. If you find that a certain feature is 
missing, ask on the mailing list. Hans and Taco have been very 
generous in adding new features on user requests.


Aditya