On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

Taco Hoekwater wrote:

...

Hi,

I have good news as well as bad news.

The good news is that the coming TeXLive will be nicely up to date when it comes to ConTeXt (currently at 2006.12.07).

In fact, I believe we should consider retracting ConTeXt from TeXLive perminently (for TL2007, we have already made promises for TL2006).

[reasons snipped]

This is indeed a very sad affair of things. IMO, ConTeXt not being included in TL is fine, as long as there is alternative. Right now, installing ConTeXt on windows is not a problem. I have introduced some of my friends to ConTeXt, and I simply recommend downloading the stand-alone distribution from Pragma. Most people do have MikTeX, but MikTeX's support for ConTeXt is/was partially broken, and does not keep pace with ConTeXt's development.

From what I have heard/read, on OSX gwTeX has good support for ConTeXt and it is also the most popular OSX tex distribution.

This leaves *nix. Now that tetex is dead, most distributions are switching to TL. Is there an alternative way of using ConTeXt which will work out of the box---something equivalent to the stand-alone distribution for Windows. If there is, then we can just ask a *nix user to use that alternative. There have been efforts by debian maintainers to get proper support for ConTeXt, so I think that all Debian based flavours will have proper ConTeXt support. There was also a rpm package by Peter Munser (IIRC), but I think that it was based on TL. Is there an alternative to other flavours of *nix? The installation instructions on the wiki for linux are intimidating. I guess that is because of the general mess in tetex and texlive towards ConTeXt, but there has to a simpler alternative. Aditya

2006/12/10, Taco Hoekwater :

Taco Hoekwater wrote:

...

Hi,

I have good news as well as bad news.

The good news is that the coming TeXLive will be nicely up to date when it comes to ConTeXt (currently at 2006.12.07).

In fact, I believe we should consider retracting ConTeXt from TeXLive perminently (for TL2007, we have already made promises for TL2006).

Hans and I are continually asked to rename or delete things

- because the names conflict with some latex package (that is invariably considered to be more inportant than ConTeXt), or - because they allegedly duplicate already existing files (that normally turns out to be false information afterward), or - because some directory name is already pre-opted by LaTeX (like where LaTeX font family support effectively disallows ConTeXt support for that same family), or - because something cannot be handled by the build scripts (that nobody is willing to even allow changes to), or - because they are considered to have an unacceptable license (heaven/FSF forbid shipping files that cannot be altered by everybody and their 4-year old child and then be redistributed at will).

After a few years of this, I am completely demotivated, and I assume Hans feels much the same way.

If ConTeXt would be removed from TL, this would be a very sad day for the TeX community (and maybe TL should be renamed to LaTeXLive then). I can understand your burn out, but I'm a bit surprised as I didn't find much discussion recently about this on the TL mailing list. I trust you have discussed this ad nauseam with Karl? Best Martin

Karl Berry wrote:

I find the characterization of the situation of ConTeXt and TL quite inaccurate. However, there seems no point in debating it. I've had the feeling for some time that you would rather have your own distribution you completely control according to your own needs and desires. So it seems there is nothing I can do but wish you well.

As for context in TL, since the thesis is that context users are smart cookies who don't mind installing software (ruby, etc.), they probably won't mind installing context itself. It may even be better for users and the context community, since then they'll presumably get the latest version instead of whatever was frozen in TL.

i've been away this weekend so this is a delayed reponse as i understand it, most problems are with additional context stuff, not the base files; so maybe we should forget about adding third party stuff with regards to things like ruby ... users can install that themselves after all tex live is not live anyway (the last couple of tex collections shiped with the minimal context trees and could run from dvd without problems and i expect manfred to put them on the dvd this year as well) Hans

Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

as completely separate systems with no overlap or clashes. There is still some overlap now (which gives the illusion of symbiosis) but in my view

the only overlap is in using some fonts and even that will go away as soon as luatex is out (and we can use gyre fonts and don't need any tfm files etc any more); actually, i think that the landscape will change drastically when luatex is used to its full power; although most of the code i write for that purpose is generic, i have no plans to call it generic (or put it under a generic tree) ... live is too short

the sooner ConTeXt becomes its own the better. There will always be cooperation at the engine level but lets sharply distinguish the TeX engine, LaTeX, and ConTeXt. There should be eg. an agnostic common TeX engine, a LaTeXLive, and a ConTeXtLive.

hm, it's not that bad, and in principle tds permits sepeartions, but in practice granularity is added when it's too late (i.e. we can only break downward compatibility then, e.g. scripts, map, enc, mp etc paths all started out pretty flat and in less structured places);

I don't want to see Hans and Taco wasting time with a non-working symbiosis. We have too many things that need to get done.

well, with luatex we aim at a texmf-context.zip file and since we have completely independent file io handling, i don't expect that many problems; Hans

Are formats also part of TeXLive? If so, will formats for XeTeX also be available (if XeTeX will be available for windows at all)? Sorry for the stupid questions. The only try I gave to TeXLive failed, so I don't know that much about its details. Mojca

On 12/14/06, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

Mojca Miklavec wrote:

...

Are formats also part of TeXLive?

In general: yes.

...

If so, will formats for XeTeX also be available

Probably not. There can be only one format with a given name within TeXLive (fmtutil), and that will almost certainly be used for pdftex.

After I finally managed to download & test a bit, I'm really glad to tell you that you were wrong this time ;) Formats are now properly placed under xetex and pdftex subfolders (and generated when one first compiles a document), so ConTeXt works with both engines without any problems in the latest TeX Live ;) Mojca (Could ConTeXt be built with slightly more hyphenation patterns in TeXLive perhaps? Well, I bear a specific one in my head at the moment ... I don't know how it is with other languages.)

On Sam, 20 Jan 2007, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

Formats are now properly placed under xetex and pdftex subfolders (and generated when one first compiles a document), so ConTeXt works with both engines without any problems in the latest TeX Live ;)

Yup, fmtutil has been patched to put all (!) formats into web2c/engine. Current fmtutil.cnf should also contain cont-en format for xetex and pdftex engines. Best wishes Norbert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Norbert Preining Università di Siena Debian Developer Debian TeX Group gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUENBY (n.) A stubborn spot on a window which you spend twenty minutes trying to clean off before discovering it's on the other side of the glass. --- Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff

On 1/21/07, Hans Hagen wrote:

Mojca Miklavec wrote:

...

On 12/14/06, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

...

Mojca Miklavec wrote:

...

Are formats also part of TeXLive?

In general: yes.

...

If so, will formats for XeTeX also be available

Probably not. There can be only one format with a given name within TeXLive (fmtutil), and that will almost certainly be used for pdftex.

After I finally managed to download & test a bit, I'm really glad to tell you that you were wrong this time ;)

well, akira already implemented the engine subpath support quite a while ago; dunno about miktex

XeTeX will be integrated in 2.7, so it's not an issue yet.

...

(Could ConTeXt be built with slightly more hyphenation patterns in TeXLive perhaps? Well, I bear a specific one in my head at the moment .... I don't know how it is with other languages.)

--all

But if formats are created automatically, it's impossible to pass options (unless one creates formats manually, of course, but even then it's a bit confusing - I never know to which location the formats are going to be placed - it's different each time when I try to generate them ;). Mojca