On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:35:54 -0800
Henry House
I strongly agree that sample set-up code (ideally well-commented so that it also serves as a tutorial of sorts) to reproduce the style of LaTeX would be helpful. The appearance of LaTeX documents isn't perfect but it produces reasonably high-quality results suitable for complex technical documents right out of the box of the box without any tweaking, whereas ConTeXt requires (at least it did for me) some trouble to set it up for the first time. To some extent this is not because of the merit of the LaTeX design itself but the fact that it is familiar and therefore highly readable to someone used to reading it. It is also the point of departure for a LaTeX user wanting to convert to using ConTeXt; hence, i would imagine many such people would prefer to tweak a LaTeX-like document appearance to better suit their needs rather than starting with something quite different. Certainly, this was the case for me; being basically satisfied with my LaTeX documents but wanting more control and the option to use the advanced features of ConTeXt. Having sample set-up code that emulated LaTeX would have eased the initial transition for me.
Pardon my French, but this thread is getting less and less useful, probably because it addresses too many issues at a time. It is rapidly degenerating from a "how to restructure the garden" into a "things I wish others would do so my life becomes easier." If someone says "I added a section to the wiki which explains which ConTeXt settings will give a document equivalent to LaTeX XXX class," fine - I would consider this superfluous, but it may help some people. But even strongly agreeing that somebody else should write a tutorial isn't getting any work done. And the assumption that most or all ConTeXt users are, at their heart, LaTeX renegades is not true, I think. Many advanced users haven't used LaTeX ever or in a long time and wouldn't want to waste their time on learning it just for the sake of such a comparison. Sorry for being so blunt, but I think this will be more helpful if we stay focussed. Thomas