new to ConTeXt

new to ConTeXt

[Pablo Rodríguez]

Hi there,

after more than five years using LaTeX (Lambda and XeLaTeX, this one for
the last months), I have decided to give ConTeXt a try. LaTeX is fine
for me: I have typeset my own dissertation in Philosophy (with ancient
Greek and Unicode) and a couple of books. But the modular design makes
things tricky at the end, and I would like to give ConTeXt (with XeTeX
and LuaTeX when it comes) a try.

At the same time, I would like to switch from TeX to XML. TeX is fine,
but XML is better for other than typographical purposes. Coming from the
humanities, I guess the right choice is TEI (P5 is expected to be
released before middle of the following year). I had some experience
with XML and Docbook some years ago, but that was before I switched to
Linux and Docbook aims to technical documentation (and I'm not a
technical guy).

I guess I can mix ConTeXt and XML with the eXaMpLe framework (I have
just read about it at wiki.contextgarden.net). In order to understand
TEI and ConTeXt, I would like to be able to create the files that will
be able to compile an TEI XML document with ConTeXt  without having to
convert it to ConTeXt. I would like to avoid XSL and XSL-FO. I guess it
should be something similar DocbookInConTeXt, but I don't know whether
it uses the eXaMplE framework (I don't even know whether .

Could anyone comment on this topic? I mean, whether the described task
could be achieved with ConTeXt, which issues may arise, whether this is
the best approach to the issue, whether I miss something, and so on.

Thanks for your help,


Pablo

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen]

� wrote:
> I guess I can mix ConTeXt and XML with the eXaMpLe framework (I have
> just read about it at wiki.contextgarden.net). In order to understand
> TEI and ConTeXt, I would like to be able to create the files that will
> be able to compile an TEI XML document with ConTeXt  without having to
> convert it to ConTeXt. I would like to avoid XSL and XSL-FO. I guess it
>   
Context can process XML directly, and for normal docs the related 
testing and programming features are ok; complex tree transformation can 
best be doen with xslt (luatex may change this); there is an xsl-fo 
processing available in context but i wonder if it has ever been used 
for serious work; fo is not that suited for quality typesetting and the 
regular machinery in context is producing better result and faster too
> should be something similar DocbookInConTeXt, but I don't know whether
> it uses the eXaMplE framework (I don't even know whether .
>   
the example framework is some ongoing experiment with web related 
tex/xml things; you don't need that, just stick to the built in xml 
handler (as described in example.pdf, but more extensive examples can be 
found in the x-*.tex files in the distribution
> Could anyone comment on this topic? I mean, whether the described task
> could be achieved with ConTeXt, which issues may arise, whether this is
> the best approach to the issue, whether I miss something, and so on.
>   
most of the projects we run at pragma involve xml -> pdf processing; 
using a dedicated dtd works most convenient

using tei is ok, as long as you stick to structural elements and keep 
away from layour-related coding

Hans


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Re: new to ConTeXt

[Pablo Rodríguez]

Hans Hagen wrote:
>> should be something similar DocbookInConTeXt, but I don't know whether
>> it uses the eXaMplE framework (I don't even know whether .
>>   
> the example framework is some ongoing experiment with web related 
> tex/xml things; you don't need that, just stick to the built in xml 
> handler (as described in example.pdf, but more extensive examples can be 
> found in the x-*.tex files in the distribution
>> Could anyone comment on this topic? I mean, whether the described task
>> could be achieved with ConTeXt, which issues may arise, whether this is
>> the best approach to the issue, whether I miss something, and so on.
>>   
> most of the projects we run at pragma involve xml -> pdf processing; 
> using a dedicated dtd works most convenient
> 
> using tei is ok, as long as you stick to structural elements and keep 
> away from layour-related coding

Thanks for your answer, Hans. Sorry for not answering before (these days
I find myself installing a new computer and moving data into it).

It seems that the task is more difficult than I thought (although
x-contm.tex seems a very interesting example to begin with).

But my problem right now is ConTeXt itself. My PhD thesis (that was
typeset with LaTeX [for the examination board], Lambda [for the
electronic publication] and XeLaTeX [just for fun ;-)]) contains quotes
and some fragments in ancient Greek. And I would like to be able to do
similar things (in a fancier way, of course ;-)) with ConTeXt.

For those ones who were newbies not so long ago or that come from a
humanities background, which are the best documents to start learning
ConTeXt?

Thanks for your help,


Pablo

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Nov 7, 2006, at 9:20 PM, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:

> It seems that the task is more difficult than I thought (although
> x-contm.tex seems a very interesting example to begin with).
>
> But my problem right now is ConTeXt itself. My PhD thesis (that was
> typeset with LaTeX [for the examination board], Lambda [for the
> electronic publication] and XeLaTeX [just for fun ;-)]) contains  
> quotes
> and some fragments in ancient Greek. And I would like to be able to do
> similar things (in a fancier way, of course ;-)) with ConTeXt.
>
> For those ones who were newbies not so long ago or that come from a
> humanities background, which are the best documents to start learning
> ConTeXt?
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
>
> Pablo

Difficult to answer this question because it's a bit vague. What kind  
of documents do you want to produce with ConTeXt? Articles,  
presentations, textbooks, lists, interactive screen documents?
But to give you a few pointers that may or may not be useful:

- The first stop would be the wiki http://wiki.contextgarden.net .  
There is a section called "Sample documents" that may be a good  
starting point.

- You could have a look at recent issues of the PracTeX journal;  
there is some stuff about ConTeXt in there, and it should be good for  
beginners.

- Of course, the Pragma website, but I guess you know that already.

- Finally, for ancient Greek, there is the ancientgreek module http:// 
modules.contextgarden.net/t-greek which I find superior to all Greek  
typesetting in LaTeX (because I wrote the module).

Don't hesitate to ask here when you have specific questions, but  
maybe that can get you started. I am a humanities guy and do all my  
work in ConTeXt...

HTH

Thomas

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:

>
> Hans Hagen wrote:
>>> should be something similar DocbookInConTeXt, but I don't know whether
>>> it uses the eXaMplE framework (I don't even know whether .
>>>
>> the example framework is some ongoing experiment with web related
>> tex/xml things; you don't need that, just stick to the built in xml
>> handler (as described in example.pdf, but more extensive examples can be
>> found in the x-*.tex files in the distribution
>>> Could anyone comment on this topic? I mean, whether the described task
>>> could be achieved with ConTeXt, which issues may arise, whether this is
>>> the best approach to the issue, whether I miss something, and so on.
>>>
>> most of the projects we run at pragma involve xml -> pdf processing;
>> using a dedicated dtd works most convenient
>>
>> using tei is ok, as long as you stick to structural elements and keep
>> away from layour-related coding
>
> Thanks for your answer, Hans. Sorry for not answering before (these days
> I find myself installing a new computer and moving data into it).
>
> It seems that the task is more difficult than I thought (although
> x-contm.tex seems a very interesting example to begin with).

You can also check the thread 
http://archive.contextgarden.net/thread/20050225.103441.cda2d788.en.html#20050225.103441.cda2d788
for some discussion on getting started with XML and context.

> But my problem right now is ConTeXt itself. My PhD thesis (that was
> typeset with LaTeX [for the examination board], Lambda [for the
> electronic publication] and XeLaTeX [just for fun ;-)]) contains quotes
> and some fragments in ancient Greek. And I would like to be able to do
> similar things (in a fancier way, of course ;-)) with ConTeXt.
>
> For those ones who were newbies not so long ago or that come from a
> humanities background, which are the best documents to start learning
> ConTeXt?

There is also Berend de Boer's Latex in proper context that can help 
in the transition.

http://articles.contextgarden.net/article/32


Aditya

Re: new to ConTeXt

[nico]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2006 17:34:54 -0500 (EST), Aditya Mahajan  
<adityam@umich.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your answer, Hans. Sorry for not answering before (these days
>> I find myself installing a new computer and moving data into it).
>>
>> It seems that the task is more difficult than I thought (although
>> x-contm.tex seems a very interesting example to begin with).
>
> You can also check the thread
> http://archive.contextgarden.net/thread/20050225.103441.cda2d788.en.html#20050225.103441.cda2d788
> for some discussion on getting started with XML and context.

Since this thread is also talking about some tools, I'll complete the list  
with dbcontext (http://dblatex.sf.net) on which I contribute, that  
translates DocBook to ConTeXt via XSL stylesheets. I guess that many  
aspects could be directly handled by context.

Here are some examples built from DocBook sources:  
http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/example/svn-book-by-dbcontext.pdf,  
http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/example/divepython-dbc.pdf.bz2.

Regards,
BG

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Pablo Rodríguez]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> On Nov 7, 2006, at 9:20 PM, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>> For those ones who were newbies not so long ago or that come from a
>> humanities background, which are the best documents to start learning
>> ConTeXt?
> 
> Difficult to answer this question because it's a bit vague. What kind  
> of documents do you want to produce with ConTeXt? Articles,  
> presentations, textbooks, lists, interactive screen documents?

Many thanks, Thomas, for your reply.

Maybe the issue here is that I want to learn how to do things in ConTeXt
that I was able to do with LaTeX. But this may be the wrong approach to
ConTeXt (because this might not be a good way to learn ConTeXt using
LaTeX as the background example).

I want ConTeXt to produce mainly articles and textbooks (after learning
that it will be easy to figure out presentations). I know some
references, but I don't know which are the best ones.

BTW, are “ConTeXt, an excursion” and “ConTeXt the manual” good
introductions to start with ConTeXt or are they (too) outdated?

> But to give you a few pointers that may or may not be useful:

Thanks, they are useful.

> - The first stop would be the wiki http://wiki.contextgarden.net .  
> There is a section called "Sample documents" that may be a good  
> starting point.
> 
> - You could have a look at recent issues of the PracTeX journal;  
> there is some stuff about ConTeXt in there, and it should be good for  
> beginners.
> 
> - Of course, the Pragma website, but I guess you know that already.
> 
> - Finally, for ancient Greek, there is the ancientgreek module http:// 
> modules.contextgarden.net/t-greek which I find superior to all Greek  
> typesetting in LaTeX (because I wrote the module).

With this particular topic, I'm not sure whether I fully understand what
you mean. For me, input and output must be Unicode (it is the best way
to avoid problems) and this can be done with XeTeX. I don't know how
good the integration with ConTeXt is, but for me and before LuaTeX is
released in an stable version, XeTeX is the only way of dealing with
fonts in TeX. Is there something in your Greek module that cannot be
done with XeTeX?

> Don't hesitate to ask here when you have specific questions, but  
> maybe that can get you started. I am a humanities guy and do all my  
> work in ConTeXt...

Actually, I knew that you were the person I wanted to ask about this.
Some time ago, I read somewhere (on the web) that you switched to
ConTeXt, after having to edit a book with Word. And then I discovered
that you teach Classics at Bonn.

Then, if the question is not too personal (it hope not, but sorry if it
is): how did you learn ConTeXt? Only tinkering with already existing
modules? Did you read any manuals? (Again, if this is not too personal,
I assume that our interests in ConTeXt are similar, although I'm not a
classicist and I don't belong to the academia)

Thanks for your help,


Pablo

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Pablo Rodríguez]

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>> For those ones who were newbies not so long ago or that come from a
>> humanities background, which are the best documents to start learning
>> ConTeXt?
> 
> There is also Berend de Boer's Latex in proper context that can help 
> in the transition.
> 
> http://articles.contextgarden.net/article/32

Thanks for the answer, Aditya. I have read it. It helps and it could be
supplemented with http://wiki.contextgarden.net/From_LaTeX_to_ConTeXt (I
guess there are some things not contained in the original article).


Pablo

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Pablo Rodríguez]

nico wrote:
>> On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>>> Thanks for your answer, Hans. Sorry for not answering before (these days
>>> I find myself installing a new computer and moving data into it).
>>>
>>> It seems that the task is more difficult than I thought (although
>>> x-contm.tex seems a very interesting example to begin with).
> 
> Since this thread is also talking about some tools, I'll complete the list  
> with dbcontext (http://dblatex.sf.net) on which I contribute, that  
> translates DocBook to ConTeXt via XSL stylesheets. I guess that many  
> aspects could be directly handled by context.

Thanks for your answer. I know that XML can be converted to
TeX/LaTeX/ConTeXt using XSL, but my XML is TEI (http://www.tei-c.org/)
and not DocBook. If I would use XSL transformation, I guess it would be
easier (at least for me) to adapt the already existing TEI-XML->LaTeX
XSL files and adapt them to ConTeXt. I wonder (out of ignorance) whether
this would be a better way than parsing the XML directly with ConTeXt.

Thanks,


Pablo

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Nov 8, 2006, at 8:35 PM, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:

>
> Many thanks, Thomas, for your reply.
>
> Maybe the issue here is that I want to learn how to do things in  
> ConTeXt
> that I was able to do with LaTeX. But this may be the wrong  
> approach to
> ConTeXt (because this might not be a good way to learn ConTeXt using
> LaTeX as the background example).

No, I think this approach is what many users do. As long as you don't  
insist that you want exactly the same syntax etc, as in LaTeX :-)

>
> I want ConTeXt to produce mainly articles and textbooks (after  
> learning
> that it will be easy to figure out presentations). I know some
> references, but I don't know which are the best ones.
>
> BTW, are “ConTeXt, an excursion” and “ConTeXt the manual” good
> introductions to start with ConTeXt or are they (too) outdated?

Most of the basic stuff is still correct, so they should be good  
starters.

>
>> But to give you a few pointers that may or may not be useful:
>
> Thanks, they are useful.
>
>> - The first stop would be the wiki http://wiki.contextgarden.net .
>> There is a section called "Sample documents" that may be a good
>> starting point.
>>
>> - You could have a look at recent issues of the PracTeX journal;
>> there is some stuff about ConTeXt in there, and it should be good for
>> beginners.
>>
>> - Of course, the Pragma website, but I guess you know that already.
>>
>> - Finally, for ancient Greek, there is the ancientgreek module  
>> http://
>> modules.contextgarden.net/t-greek which I find superior to all Greek
>> typesetting in LaTeX (because I wrote the module).
>
> With this particular topic, I'm not sure whether I fully understand  
> what
> you mean. For me, input and output must be Unicode (it is the best way
> to avoid problems) and this can be done with XeTeX. I don't know how
> good the integration with ConTeXt is, but for me and before LuaTeX is
> released in an stable version, XeTeX is the only way of dealing with
> fonts in TeX. Is there something in your Greek module that cannot be
> done with XeTeX?

I must admit that I've been too lazy to really test XeTeX, so I may  
be wrong here. You can use Unicode input with the module; the only  
difference would be that you have to wrap all Greek passages in  
\localgreek{} commands or \start ... \stop pairs. I guess XeTeX  
provides proper hyphenation for Greek, but
- the module has support for more fonts than XeTeX;
- does XeTeX allow relative scaling of fonts?
Anyway, only Hans and Taco know to what extent I will have to rewrite  
everything when luatex and support for OpenType fonts are there.

>
>> Don't hesitate to ask here when you have specific questions, but
>> maybe that can get you started. I am a humanities guy and do all my
>> work in ConTeXt...
>
> Actually, I knew that you were the person I wanted to ask about this.
> Some time ago, I read somewhere (on the web) that you switched to
> ConTeXt, after having to edit a book with Word. And then I discovered
> that you teach Classics at Bonn.
>
> Then, if the question is not too personal (it hope not, but sorry  
> if it
> is): how did you learn ConTeXt? Only tinkering with already existing
> modules? Did you read any manuals? (Again, if this is not too  
> personal,
> I assume that our interests in ConTeXt are similar, although I'm not a
> classicist and I don't belong to the academia)
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
>
> Pablo

Yes, I started with already existing modules, and it took me a while  
(and lots of help here on the list) to write my own code. I never  
actually read any manual cover to cover, but the big manual is almost  
always open on my computer for reference. I just finished typesetting  
a book with ConTeXt, complete with dozens of cross-references,  
indexes, bibliography. Nothing very complicated, but it's wonderful  
to see that things work. There are still two or three problems, but  
they are fairly harmless. I love donig my own presentation styles  
with ConTeXt and metafun. The more I use ConTeXt, the more amazed I  
am...

Hope this can inspire you a bit

Thomas

Re: new to ConTeXt

[nico]

On Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:53:37 +0100, Pablo Rodríguez <oinos@web.de> wrote:

> nico wrote:
>>> On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>>>> Thanks for your answer, Hans. Sorry for not answering before (these  
>>>> days
>>>> I find myself installing a new computer and moving data into it).
>>>>
>>>> It seems that the task is more difficult than I thought (although
>>>> x-contm.tex seems a very interesting example to begin with).
>>
>> Since this thread is also talking about some tools, I'll complete the  
>> list
>> with dbcontext (http://dblatex.sf.net) on which I contribute, that
>> translates DocBook to ConTeXt via XSL stylesheets. I guess that many
>> aspects could be directly handled by context.
>
> Thanks for your answer. I know that XML can be converted to
> TeX/LaTeX/ConTeXt using XSL, but my XML is TEI (http://www.tei-c.org/)
> and not DocBook. If I would use XSL transformation, I guess it would be
> easier (at least for me) to adapt the already existing TEI-XML->LaTeX
> XSL files and adapt them to ConTeXt. I wonder (out of ignorance) whether
> this would be a better way than parsing the XML directly with ConTeXt.

I have no experience with handling XML directly with context, but I guess  
it's the most elegant way of processing, since it relies upon only one  
tool (no XSLT processor, no stylesheet, no glue to pass the output to  
texexec), there is no intermediate step, and the code should be smaller.

But for me the drawback is that you need a good perception about how  
context/tex works (things about grouping, how macros expand and other  
funny things) and debugging might be harder. At least XSL gives an output  
that you can tweak until something compiles and gives the expected output  
:-) The other thing is that there are some specific processings that I  
have no idea how it can be implemented with context.

This said, I know there are many people who happily process their XML docs  
directly with context. Maybe they could also give their feedback.

Regards,
BG

Re: new to ConTeXt

[Pablo Rodríguez]

Sorry for not having answered before, Thomas.

>>> - Finally, for ancient Greek, there is the ancientgreek module  
>>> http://
>>> modules.contextgarden.net/t-greek which I find superior to all Greek
>>> typesetting in LaTeX (because I wrote the module).

Is this module contained in the standard ConTeXt distribution or has it
to be downloaded separately?

After reading the the three files contained in the module. I wonder
whether they provide hyphenation for Greek. Do they?

> I must admit that I've been too lazy to really test XeTeX, so I may  
> be wrong here. You can use Unicode input with the module; the only  
> difference would be that you have to wrap all Greek passages in  
> \localgreek{} commands or \start ... \stop pairs. I guess XeTeX  
> provides proper hyphenation for Greek, but
> - the module has support for more fonts than XeTeX;
> - does XeTeX allow relative scaling of fonts?
> Anyway, only Hans and Taco know to what extent I will have to rewrite  
> everything when luatex and support for OpenType fonts are there.

XeTeX allows relative scaling of fonts.

> Yes, I started with already existing modules, and it took me a while  
> (and lots of help here on the list) to write my own code. I never  
> actually read any manual cover to cover, but the big manual is almost  
> always open on my computer for reference. I just finished typesetting  
> a book with ConTeXt, complete with dozens of cross-references,  
> indexes, bibliography. Nothing very complicated, but it's wonderful  
> to see that things work. There are still two or three problems, but  
> they are fairly harmless. I love donig my own presentation styles  
> with ConTeXt and metafun. The more I use ConTeXt, the more amazed I  
> am...
> 
> Hope this can inspire you a bit

Yes. Tinkering (and asking in the mailing list ;-)) is the way of learning.

I have discovered the “Typographic Programming” document  style.pdf)
which seems very interesting, but unfortunately it is far for being
complete. And I guess Hans is too busy to finish this book anytime soon.

Thanks,


Pablo