November 2005 - ntg-context - NTG Mailing Lists

Mini-survey: What do you do with ConTeXt?
by Taco Hoekwater 04 Nov '05

04 Nov '05

Hi all, For the next issue of the ntg's Maps journal, Hans and I believe it would be nice to publish the collected responses to this simple question: What do you do with ConTeXT? We think it would be nice to see all the various ways in which people experience ConTeXt. We are not looking for articles, in fact we really want just a small amount of text per user, nothing longer then you would normally type in an email message. One, perhaps two paragraphs that simply tell about your personal experience using (or playing with) (or fighting with) (or yelling at) (or staring at in bewilderment) (or revelling in) (or running away from) ConTeXt. If you like this idea, just reply to this message. I will then collect and merge the responses, and finally put a pdf on-line somewhere. Don't be shy! Taco

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Re: Mini-survey: What do you do with ConTeXt?
by Duncan Hothersall 04 Nov '05

04 Nov '05

> What do you do with ConTeXT? I have a repository of learning materials which are marked up in (DocBook-based) XML. They are in a few different languages (majority English, with Spanish, Dutch and recently Chinese) and belong to several different universities/training organisations on whose behalf we maintain them. I convert the XML into ConTeX code in a batch process using a text processing language, and then use ConTeXt to typeset the result into books and booklets of different styles. We also produce web versions of a lot of the materials, and I use ConTeXt (plus ImageMagick) to create equation GIFs for maths that can't be rendered in pure HTML. We probably have about 30 million words and 10,000 figures under management, all held in the same XML structure, and need to run several releases a day. As a result, all of the processes involved in publishing, including the ConTeXt parts, are part of a batch workflow on a server, and I rarely see the ConTeXt code itself (cos it usually just works). Thanks Hans! Duncan

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adding value to key
by Peter Münster 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Hello, again a feature request: sometimes it's useful to add a value to key, without replacing it. Example: \setupexternalfigures[directory={\figurepathlist,another/dir}] -> \setupexternalfigures[adddirectory=another/dir] Or, if there is already some background (from an environment-file for example), and you want to add another: \setupbackgrounds[page][addbackground=Draft] Cheers, Peter -- http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/

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(Re)installing mswintex
by Sytse Knypstra 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Dear ConTeXt users, Yesterday I reinstalled the minimal ConTeXt under Windows XP. I carried out the following steps: 1. Rename the old directory C:\tex into C:\old_tex 2. Download mswintex.zip from Pragma 3. Unzip into C:\ (all files and directories are now under C:\tex) 4. Start a CMD shell and run the commands: > cd c:\tex > setuptex.bat > mktexlsr > texexec --make --alone nl en metafun Then I tried a minimal example and it gave me the following warnings: [1.1 Warning: pdfetex.exe (file pdftex.map): cannot open font map file ] and, in the end: Warning: pdfetex.exe (file ec-lmr12): Font ec-lmr12 at 72 not found What did I do wrong? Sytse Knypstra

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TeX & chemistry (was: alignment of figures)
by Mojca Miklavec 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Jörg Hagmann wrote: > I use "Chemdraw", save as .pict and finish it in Illustrator. I will > eventually look into PPCHTEX, but at the moment struggling with > ConTEXt is all I can do. There is a problem with my method: the > formula saved as .pict look awful (bonds shifted, atoms not aligned > etc.) and I have to correct everything by hand in Illustrator. I am > sure PPCHTEX would do a better job. On the other hand, if I switch > the formulae should look the same (bondlength, thickness, font etc.) > as the ones I already did (and don't want to do again). I suppose > that's feasable? I may be wrong, but I doubt that PPCHTEX would satisfy your needs. It's a complicated notation which is not flexible enough (I gave up since there were quite some cases for which I wasn't able to draw what I wanted to.) XymTeX is more powerful, but not supported by ConTeXt (although you can still draw single formulas in LaTeX and import them into ConTeXt as pictures) and still with very complex notation. (I would say that all you need is a better export from Chemdraw, but as this is a proprietary software I doubt that there are any specifications how to write an exporting module. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I wish I were.) I'm playing a bit with drawing formulas in metafun, but my question is: are there any guidelines about how a nice formula should look like? (Yes, I have problems to decide how thick the lines have to be, how to draw a triple or a steric bond properly, which size of letters to use). Knuth did a marvellous job with drawing math formulae in TeX, there are many books about typography, but I've never seen anything about chemistry and I haven't found anyone who could answer me this question. Mojca

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strange (?) exporting from pdf
by andrea valle 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Hi to all, I was trying to convert form pdf to rtf in order to share docs with non-conTeXt people. Acrobat 7.0 allows with "save as" to export to many formats. When I convert a pdf created with MSword (or something like: I tried also with some on-line pdfs) I have substantially no problems. But when I convert pdfs created with context or latex I have no blank spaces in the output rtf. Also, accents became autonomous ' (like in source). This seems to be systematic: same behavior with conversion to doc or html, same behavior if I use Trapeze converter instead of Acrobat. E.g.: pdf in --> out (rtf, doc, ...): questo è un test --> questo`euntest I suppose it depends on pedf source generation. Any hints? Thanks a lot -a- Andrea Valle Laboratorio multimediale "G. Quazza" Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Torino andrea.valle(a)unito.it

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Hans: requested reminder on texutil extension
by Christopher Creutzig 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Salve Hans, you asked me to remind you of the following proposal: I'd like to have a way of making texexec/texutil run a program *after* the *last* TeX run. \doifmode{*last}{\installprogram{...}} does not work, because \installprogram is only honored between two runs. regards, Christopher

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OT: PDF word counts?
by Adam Lindsay 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

Sorry for going a bit off-topic, but does anyone here know of good tools for doing a word count directly on existing PDFs? cheers, adam -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept. atl(a)comp.lancs.ac.uk Lancaster University, InfoLab21 +44(0)1524/510.514 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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"Smart" \in
by Giuseppe Bilotta 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

Hello all, I have a document which is split into separate \parts. I would like the \in command (& friends) to automatically add the "part" reference when cross-referencing across parts. Example: """ \part[part:one]{Part one} \chapter[ch:one]{Chapter one} \chapter[ch:two]{Chapter two} As seen in \in chapter[ch:one] \part[part:two]{Part two} \chater[ch:2-1]{Chapter two} As seen in \in chapter[ch:one] """ The first \in would say chapter~1, the second chapter~1, part~1. -- Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

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graphics paths
by M.guravage 02 Nov '05

02 Nov '05

Hello, I keep a few pieces of code and pdf graphics in a private TEXMF tree from where I include them in various documents. I reference a graphic by its filename sans the suffix, e.g. \externalfigure[logo]. A glance at the log reveals that the filename resolves to the exhaustive pathname of the graphic in my private TEXMF tree, and the graphic appears in the document - until today that is. I revisited this document today which I last typeset with context version 2005.02.15. Today I used the version from 2005.08.31, and the graphics are missing. The log, not surprisingly, says, 'figures: figure logo can not be found.' A simple work around is to copy the graphic into the same directory as the document, which suggests it is a path problem. Has anyone else experienced this behavior and can suggest a more elegant solution. With kind regards, Michael Guravage

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