Gerben Wierda wrote:
I am (again) considering moving to ConTeXt. A few years ago I investigated the move because I have apositive impression of the quality of the ConTeXt project and because I find the standard LaTeX layouts ugly. At that time I decided against it because the first thing I tried (a list within a list) did not work and because I was under the impression that I would have to do alot of layout myself (and I have TeX for that, right?). I am thinking of using LaTeX and the memoir class. Anyway, I am still tempted.
So I am investigating again. I would like to know if (and how) I can do the following in ConTeXt. I did read the manual before writing this: - Project structure for a book, chapters to be in separate files. Chapters to be processed individually when required, or better: chapter + index/toc/appendices, etc. How do you do that? I do not understand the manual here entirely and my test from a few years ago failed.
you can use something === thisbook.tex \startproject book \environment mystyle.tex .... \stopproject === book.tex \startproduct book \project thisbook \component whatever \component onemore \stopproduct === whatever.tex \startcomponent whatever \project thisbook .... \stopcomponent you can then run product and component files independently
- lettrine.sty (I have my own TeX code now, but lettrine is probably better)
your own code should not be a problem as long as you don;t overload low level commands
- Page layout as in a book (no whitespace between pars and indentation).
\setupindenting and \setupwhitespace etc (probably samples in the wiki)
Good readable. - mfpic or another way to program drawings (vectors/functions)
metapost; or just mfpic and converted to pdf
- microtype.sty (protrusion,probably no stretching)
no problem, (adam lindsay can probably best help you with that in relation to the fonts that you have on th emac)
- Optional paragraph (not line) numbering, suppressable (as in some philosophy books)
supported
- 2 output options: - Final: Large paperback size (somewhat larger than pocket) pages centered on A4 portrait paper - Draft: Two of those pages,slightly shrunk on A4 landscape paper. No fancy ordering, just page 0-1, 2-3, 4-5, etc.
\startmode[final] ... settings ... \stopmode and then texexec --mode=final .... or just in your file \endablemode[final] at the top
So, how do I do these things? I would like to try to recode a part ofmy book-project in ConTeXt to see if it works for me.
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