![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/97ab1ad2cf9dfb93e2bcb2032f2ca471.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
What do you do with ConTeXT?
As the editor of the 70+ page annual report of an ornithological society, I learned to hate word. When I was approached by a publisher with the offer of writing a textbook of biochemistry, I decided to try something more suitable and chose -- just why is hard to say, I didn't know anything about any of the possibilities -- ConTEXt. It was very hard simply to find out what it was and then how to install it and after that how to get some presentable result. But it's great -- thanks to everybody. It is always claimed that writing in a text editor and leaving the layout/typesetting part for later is better because you concentrate on writing. This is not true, at least not when working with ConTEXt. It is much more fun to "tex" what you have, to try out this and that, than to think about the next sentence. I now write with a Parker Duofold (bought years ago while on a bicycle tour in the Netherlands!) in a notebook before I go to the computer. One last thing: TEX-users seem to be very modest. They always claim to be just beginners. An example: The title of a recent TUGboat article (2003) was "Writing a book -- A first experience with LaTEX". The introduction defined the contribution as a "paper by non-experts for non-experts". Just what I need, I thought. It wasn't, and the explanation could be found at the end: The author had "a thirty-plus year career in high tech computer R&D" ... Cheers, Jörg. Prof. Dr.med. Jörg Hagmann-Zanolari Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics DKBW, University of Basel Mattenstrasse 28 CH-4058 Basel Switzerland Phone +41 (0)61 6953049