On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 8:05 PM, Marco Patzer
Then there is a medium sized manual aimed at beginners, “ConTeXt, an excursion” (which is rather outdated, I agree)
I was actually aiming at one step lower and in doing things in the order a word processor user would approach ConTeXt. My copy of excursion is fairly thumbed at this stage, but I still sometimes need to use find to actually get at the things I need. So I wrote this new one "my way".
As I said, I didn't take part in the mentioned discussion, so I might be missing out relevant information.
It wasn't anything major, just some off-hand sentences. I've just written something similar for MetaPost, so this approach felt natural and kept me amused during the travel home (including 4 hrs spent sitting at the airport).
I never installed ConTeXt on Windows, but if this is true this should definitely be fixed. According to
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/ConTeXt_Standalone#Command_line_method
it should be sufficient to run
1) download the installer: http://minimals.contextgarden.net/setup/context-setup-mswin.zip 2) install: first-setup.bat 3) add ConTeXt to path: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Windows_Installation:_ConTeXt_Suite_with_SciTe... (Maybe adding the exact command or a screenshot for step 3 would be helpful.)
The problem is here: Windows users in general aren't used to command line and even fewer have ever touched a path (or even know such a thing exists). The only almost one-click approach is TeXLive - and unfortunately I can't currently test that on my Windows as it might mess up with my vital ConTeXt installation. Thus there is no real "Windows way" of installing ConTeXt and this may hold some potential users back.
5 Formatting text
Since you explicitly mention “The basic idea is to separate layout from content” in sections 2.1 and 3.1 I think it's not very educational to tell beginners to use font switches in the code:
This is a {\ss test}. % sans serif This is a {\tt test}. % typewriter
Rather teach logical markup from the very beginning.
True. Not that I follow this advice myself, but probably should (some of my earlier ConTeXt files are - umm - not beautiful because I have some Word baggage).
\definehighlight [important] [style=bold]
\important{This} is logical markup.
I'd say this approach is too complicated for somebody who just wants to do documents on ConTeXt (more typing, too, and we people are lazy). However, I was thinking about trashing both \bf and \it and just talking about \em for marking emphasis. I think the big manual includes information on how to adjust \em to one's preferences (I'm sure I saw it *somewhere* while digging stuff up for this).
This is arguable, but I personally would drop the (not deprecated and still supported) MkII syntax for floats
Interestingly, this was the only syntax I know of and the only one I can find in the manuals and on the wiki.
\placefigure [here,force] % really try to put the float just here {This is a cow} % Caption {\externalfigure[cow][width=2cm]}
and replace it with the more intuitive MkIV syntax:
\startplacefigure [title=A cow, reference=fig:acow] \externalfigure [cow] \stopplacefigure
Nice. I'll try to get around to wikifying this asap.
And refrain from using the [here, force] setting, otherwise beginners will never grasp the concept of floats.
True. And otherwise I'm not happy about what I said about floats - I just barely understand them myself and gaining that knowledge was hard work - so I'll rewrite that section and will come up with something else to put there. (Although floats with "here,force" still float, just less so. Been there, done that; now I know it is a feature, not a bug. Useful for a thesis, not so in my work.)
6.4 Combinations
Also arguable, but you might consider using the newer
\startcombination [nx=3, ny=1] …
syntax. It's more contextish and easier to understand, in my opinion. Furthermore, it's not covered in any of the manuals, as far as I know.
Nor the wiki, I'd never seen it before, although I've understood that more and more ConTeXt commands move towards the start ... stop syntax. Again, I'll try to get around to wikify this soonish (first I want to try it out, though). I've found before that I learn best by teaching others, for I will not teach anything I don't properly understand my way. Now I've already learned three new things, not bad. :-) Thanks for the comments! Mari