On 2011-05-31 "Sanja C."
a) Is the ConTeXt project alive?
Yes
The newest PDF documentation I could find seems to be from 2007; most of it is dated 2003 or older.
http://pmrb.free.fr/contextref.pdf is from 2011-03-25
b) Do you think that ConTeXt is an appropriate tool for the use case I described (be honest please ;-)),and easy enough to learn for someone with almost no TeX experience? The requirements are: - Support for elaborate, colorful, graphics-heavy design, which I would preferably create in Inkscape and then export as vector graphics (or port to ConTeXt's own graphics language) as necessary.
Context is well suited for good typography and technical graphics. It's maybe not the perfect tool for DTP like magazines with very fancy layout. However it's no problem to include the graphics you create with inkscape, etc. Check http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/metafun-s.pdf for graphics related stuff.
- Ability to write a style *once* (with reasonable effort), and "outsource" it to an external file (or files), so that for each new release of the newsletter, only a simple content TeX file (or files) with minimal amount of markup is required (which e.g. even a non-tech-savvy writer/editor could edit)
Yes
- Ability to easily include pictures in the content, and let the typesetting engine automatically position them (either in the main text area with text floating around them, or in special margin areas).
Yes
c) Are there any full-featured examples of design-heavy booklets/magazines/etc created with ConTeXt., for which the full source code is publicly available?
I don't know about magazines created with ConTeXt. But you can check the manuals at http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Official_ConTeXt_Documentation there's also a link to the sources. Marco