[NTG-context] Re: New user here!

[NTG-context] Re: New user here!

[Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context]

On 6/14/25 12:37, John Was wrote:
> Good day, Contexters

Hi John,

welcome to the mailing list.

> I've been using plain TeX for many years (EmTeX, if anyone can remember
> that, and latterly XeTeX), but my motivation for getting acquainted with
> ConText, rather late in life, is the need to produce tagged PDFs that
> will be accessible to the visually impaired (generally using an audio
> reader), and I understand (or at least hope) that ConText can help with
> that.

PDF tagging is being added to ConTeXt. This means that some features may
need to be added yet.

> I'm only just getting started with the /Not so Short Introduction/, and
> of course have many questions which I think/hope I will be able to
> answer myself from the documentation:  I've not managed to load pstricks
> or edmac,

As for pstricks (never used it), I have just found that there is a
module `m-pstrick', but it doesn’t work with LuaMetaTeX.

I couldn’t make it work with LuaTeX either (sample from
https://mailman.ntg.nl/archives/list/ntg-context@ntg.nl/message/RJR7MRTPR7S35OH4KWAWIOAMY3CRF5UB/).

edmac is almost three decades old. If you want
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wujastyk/edmac/refs/heads/main/Wujastyk%20and%20Lavagnino_Edmac317%20book_1996.pdf#page=84,
this should be achievable with ConTeXt (no modules needed).

> for example, but this must be possible, and some primitives
> such as \baselineskip seem to have disappeared

LuaMetaTeX happens to have a primitive with the same name,
https://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/luametatex.pdf#page=93.

> together with the fontcall system I'm used to:
> 
> \font\umirtenpointsevenfive = "MinionPro-Regular:+onum:mapping=tex-
> text:letterspace=1.6" at 10.75pt

Not clear to me what the second command (after `\font`) means in plain
English.

> [...] With my XeTeX-produced PDFs an audio
> reader will simply read all of the main text on a page, then the
> footnotes (the last of which may be split between pages), and then start
> again on the next page - clearly annoying and unacceptable to those who
> can't see the PDF.

This is probably due to a poorly tagged PDF document (my guess).

> I'd be most grateful to be pointed in the right direction - or is
> what I've outlined simply not achievable?

I think LuaLaTeX may achieve that too (for your info).

Not sure whether our tagging is that far now (with notes).

I hope it helps,

Pablo
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[NTG-context] Re: New user here!

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 14.06.2025 um 15:40 schrieb Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context:
> On 6/14/25 12:37, John Was wrote:
>> Good day, Contexters
> 
> Hi John,
> 
> welcome to the mailing list.
> 
>> [...]
> 
> As for pstricks (never used it), I have just found that there is a
> module `m-pstrick', but it doesn’t work with LuaMetaTeX.
> 
> I couldn’t make it work with LuaTeX either (sample from
> https://mailman.ntg.nl/archives/list/ntg-context@ntg.nl/message/RJR7MRTPR7S35OH4KWAWIOAMY3CRF5UB/).

pstricks uses postscript which isn't supported with pdftex, luatex etc.

> edmac is almost three decades old. If you want
> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wujastyk/edmac/refs/heads/main/Wujastyk%20and%20Lavagnino_Edmac317%20book_1996.pdf#page=84,
> this should be achievable with ConTeXt (no modules needed).
> 
>> for example, but this must be possible, and some primitives
>> such as \baselineskip seem to have disappeared
> 
> LuaMetaTeX happens to have a primitive with the same name,
> https://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/luametatex.pdf#page=93.

\baselineskip is the primitive used with \setupinterlinespace

>> together with the fontcall system I'm used to:
>>
>> \font\umirtenpointsevenfive = "MinionPro-Regular:+onum:mapping=tex-
>> text:letterspace=1.6" at 10.75pt
> 
> Not clear to me what the second command (after `\font`) means in plain
> English.

The context version is

\definefont [umirtenpointsevenfive] [file:MinionPro-Regular*<featureset> 
at 10.75pt]

and it creates the font switch \umirtenpointsevenfive like the xetex 
version.

Wolfgang

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[NTG-context] Re: New user here!

[Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context]

On 6/14/25 16:03, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:
> [...]
> pstricks uses postscript which isn't supported with pdftex, luatex etc.

Just as a general comment, Taco developed Escrito
(https://escrito.luatex.org/) in order to have pstricks in LuaTeX
(https://escrito.luatex.org/bt10/escritotalk.pdf#page=2).

But it clearly seems that he abandoned this project in the meantime.

Pablo
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[NTG-context] Re: New user here!

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025, Hans Hagen wrote:

> On 6/14/2025 4:32 PM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> > On Sat, 14 Jun 2025, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:
> > 
> >> The pstricks module isn't supported anymore and even in the past it worked
> >> only when you used postscript as output format.
> > 
> > The pstricks module created a temp file, processed it using texexec, and
> > converted the generated ps to pdf using ps2pdf. You could automate it using
> > filter module (by processing the figures using latex!)
> > 
> > Something along the lines of: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/462257/323
> 
> Actually, there is a ps interpreter (m-escrito) that taco wrote a few decades
> ago when postscript was still hip and that I redid / optimized one decaded
> ago, which is still around .. you can run that file and get this tiger; i
> suppose I could actually optimize it a bit more and even integrate it with
> pstricks but i bet no one will revert back to pstricks so i never bothered.
> We keep it around for the fun of it and those who like to program in
> postscript.

Thanks. I'll check it. 

But I agree. Postscript is a really esoteric programming language and IMO the pstricks wrapper not very elegant. So there is very little value in providing a wrapper around it. 

Aditya
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