OK, so the ConTeXt that comes with the TeX distribution I use (until
eariler today, MacPorts, and as from later today, fink) is ancient.
now, with good old LaTeX that's not much of a problem - just put the
most recent release in the few relevant places in texmf-local,
rebuild the formats, and off you go. with ConTeXt, that's, er, not
so simple.
the first attempt I made was to pull dowm the most recent version of
the base files and then run
sudo texmfstart ctxtools --update
which seemingly worked, pulled the updates to texmf-local, and
complied with no error messages. however, the new ConTeXt failed to
compile documents, giving lots of error messages about undefined
commands.
texexec test.tex (which used to work) gives
mktextfm: `mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode;
input ec-lmr12' failed to make ec-lmr12.tfm.
kpathsea: Appending font creation commands to missfont.log.
! Font \*12ptrmtfrm*=ec-lmr12 not loadable: Metric (TFM) file not found.
ruby `kpsewhich --format=texmfscripts texmfstart.rb` texexec test
(which is in essence what the recommended shell script does) gives
ConTeXt ver: 2005.01.31 fmt: 2006.12.30 int: english mes: english
language : language en is active