Hi Alex,


I am in a similar situation, just a few months ahead of you. I am
writing a textbook and decided to do that in Context, without having
had any experience with TeX or LaTeX.

So far, I am pleased with my decision (my experience covers figures,
math, tables, footnotes, text and figures in margin - a lot of it
default stuff - but not yet bibliography, index, fonts (except greek)
and table of contents).

The discussion group helped me when necessary and politely ignored
some premature idiotic questions. However, the level of the
discussions is way above my head, and I at times get the feeling of
being an obnoxious intruder.

The most important thing: it is fun and often a welcome change from
writing. It reminds me of old-style photography, where you exposed the
film and then had to wait, wondering whether the picture would come
out as hoped or not. But if one doesn't like that, the effort is
probably too much for a PhD thesis.

Cheers, Jörg.


Prof. Dr.med. Jörg Hagmann-Zanolari

Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics

DKBW, University of Basel

Mattenstrasse 28

CH-4058 Basel

Switzerland

Phone +41 (0)61 6953049


On Jun 17, 2005, at 11:49 AM, Alexandra Ribeiro wrote:


<excerpt><fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>Hi,</smaller></fontfamily>

 

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>I need some
advices/guidelines before start writing my PhD thesis.</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>I’m completely new to TeX and
of course to Context but I’m convinced that Microsoft Word is far away
from being the right tool for writing a long document. Well, in the
past I had some big big headaches…</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>At this moment I’ve to make a
choice: continue using Word or start learning a new tool, which will
probably consume much of my time. So, I’m in a dilemma. That’s why I’m
asking for help.</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>Is it really worth learning
Context? I mean, does this package deal efficiently with some
important things like TOC, cross-references, bibliography, figures,
math, …? Is it too hard to learn (for a mere mortal, of course)? What
about support for different languages, in particular for Portuguese?</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>If I choose Context, can some
somebody give me some guidelines/advices?</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>I’ve already downloaded
mswincontext.zip and I’ll start studying/testing Context.</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>Thank you.</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller> </smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>Alex</smaller></fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>alex.r@netcabo.pt</smaller></fontfamily>_______________________________________________

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</excerpt>