Re: [NTG-context] State of documentation of ConTeXt?

As is said most often here in California, that’s just your opinion Hans! ;) On Jul 15, 2014, at 3:54 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 7/16/2014 12:26 AM, David Wooten wrote:

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On Jul 15, 2014, at 2:59 AM, Gerben Wierda mailto:Gerben.Wierda@rna.nl> wrote:

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I like ConTeXt (still do, I liked its approach when I first encountered it). But the project is more the ongoing private tinkering of a small in-crowd (that communicates with some followers).

ConTeXt is managed a bit like a small group of researchers sharing a couple of complex and undocumented models/programs and tinkering with them as they go along. It’s an activity without formal design, but with a lot of trial-and-error/testing.

Given that status (and the fact that it has had that status for over a /decennium/), I don’t expect it to ever become a serious product that is (semi-)professionally managed. I prefer content over management every day, but something like this needs some minimal management. That requires both time (=money) and capabilities. Besides, the tinkering researchers may not be inclined to do that, they want to tinker.

Agreed, though for my part with the opposite emphasis. I do not think ConTeXt is meant to be a “serious product”, as in /being developed to be a product in the “marketplace” of typesetting software — even open/free software. /My impression is exactly yours, it is being developed primarily for the purposes of Pragma—a small in-crowd no doubt—but with

don't get me wrong: the development is to a large extend possible because we can use it at pragma (it make sit possible to do things that often cannot be done otherwise) but most of the features that have been added the last years as well as numerous additional options are purely user driven: most styles we write are rather simple .. the complexity comes from the often messy or complex or to-be-manipulated content and range of products; so, it being mostly user driven (but within the constraints that we keep a relative stable core) also means that users have a responsibility for helping with documentation

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extraordinarily generous support for a small community of non-Pragma people interested in using it. I’m /grateful/ to have access to ConTeXt, as for me it’s the only sane method of typesetting the kind of documents I wish to typeset — /not /LaTeX, /not /InDesign, /not /Plain TeX, … I can tell you that every question or suggestion I’ve had has been responded to in the most generous form in this community, which I cannot say about /any other/ platform I’ve used, typesetting or otherwise.

keep in mind that context has been part of the tex distributions for quite a while now (nearly 20 years), that there are others than me who know the source code pretty well (which means that it doesn't depend on pragma), that the context crowd has been actively involved in development of (and even triggered) general tex developments (..., luatex, mplib, fonts, ...) so it's not as isolated as you suggest.

once the move from mkii to mkiv is finishes and luatex is kind of done, there might be time for writing more documentation; we're far from retiring

of the other macro packages, plain tex is frozen, and latex dev is quite controlled too (anyone can write additional code for any macro package)

(and the context mailing list is one of the more active tex related lists and not the smallest either)

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It’s suspect to take umbrage on another’s behalf, but “tinkering researchers may not be inclined to do that, they want to tinker” — It’s absurd to suggest that Hans &co. are “tinkering” for the sake of tinkering.

sometimes we do, when we explore new posibilities,

Hans

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