2011/12/20 Patrick Gundlach
Hello Marek,
Hi Mr. Gundlach .Just want to say Im very dissapointed that no installing package of ConText exist. I mean like you install things in Win – two cliks and Done! I was studying ConText whole afternoon and i liked it – But – im very very sick of this kind of installing. It just makes people like me to hate the whole thing about trying something else then MS Word. I was eager to learn this ConText ant than BIIIIIIG! Frustration cause i could not run it. All those versions of packages - i wanted to shoot myself.
Yea, i know you dont get paid for this, BUT - come on Mr. Gundla. Is it that hard to make one ABSOLUTE DUMMY PACKAGE (you geeks can call it how you want i know you like to use word dummies for people who are lesser geeks than you :) ) two cliks and lalala! Hello Word! You save afternoon to many other people :D Just think about it, ok?
I don't know if it's a private exchange of messages, but anyway... 1) ConTeXt comes in two flavour: mkii and mkiv. mkii uses pdftex, and it's frozen, mkiv uses luatex and it's under active development 2) If you plan to use mkii, the simplest way is download and install the latest texlive; it has an installer, it's full of fonts --- and it's big. 3) if you want to use mkiv, keep in mind that it's under active development: things can change from a "release" (aka "beta") to another and a certain level of skill in system management and programming is required to manage the changes 4) the main developer uses Windows, and at least other two use Linux and Mac because, following the TeX tradition, we try to be OS/distro-aware (at least for the more common OS) 5) ConTeXt (and TeX) is not like MS Word, even if there are some programs that have a visual approach (TeXmacs, Texworks, for example, but most of them use Latex) For a properly configured system, an editor is almost all is needed. Under Windows there is a very good support for Scite, but I use emacs (so that I don't change anything when I switch to Linux ) and I don't have any kind of problem. Given that, installing more than a mkiv-beta and/or install mkiv frequently it's quite common, and for this task the command line approach is better than other. The instructions for windows are http://wiki.contextgarden.net/ConTeXt_Standalone#Installation_and_use_on_Win... and are not particularly complicated -- luigi