Maybe I'm missing the point, but what about Emacs? There are versions for most operating systems, and emacs+auctex is surely the editing system of choice for any TeX-based system. -Alasdair 2011/8/15 Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد

Hi Kip,

On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:16:58 -0600, Kip Warner wrote:

As some of you may know, I'm working on a professional introductory book

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for learning ConTeXt. Part of the philosophy of this book is to be as self-contained as possible, so we'll be using a preferred editor.

Hey Idris. I think writing a book is a great idea and much needed. I

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don't believe that tying it to a specific editor though is neither necessary nor a good idea.

The Book will not be "tied" to an editor. However, one goal of the book is to be accessible to absolute newbies for whom the TeX-vs-editor distinction will be a turn-off. A complete newbie system should include an editor/environment. The book will be arranged in a way that the two are not coupled, and those with some TeX or other technical background can easily ignore Npp.

Not one editor/ide out there is ideal for ConTeXt (including bidi editing

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and other user-friendly configurability). The best balance I could find is Notepad++ (Npp), and that's what I'm going with.

The problem with Npp is that the tens of millions of users out there

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Wow, that would be great if we got tens of millions of users to buy the Book :D :D :D

running operating systems like Ubuntu will not be able to use Notepad++

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since it is written only for Windows.

Well, most people using Linux have some technical facility, so they can configure their own editors.

It might be better to decouple the

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editor from the information on ConTeXt itself and perhaps offer editor specific integration information in an appendix.

That is actually one option I'm considering. In any case.

You'll find that Gedit,

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I did look at gedit, but for the current vision I have for introducing ConTeXt to non-technical folks it does not work.

Actually, I spent months checking for a better candidate than Npp, experimenting with just about everything I could get my hands on. On balance Npp got the best score on all the benchmarks I set. That's not to say I wouldn't prefer something better, but that decision is done, only to be revisited if something really AMAZING happens in the next few months.

WinEdt would really have been be my ideal choice -- but the lack of unicode, bidi is just a non-starter. TeXWorks has a long way to go, and although I'm a fan of Qt its open-type implementation is buggy; so some Arabic-monospaced fonts don't show up correctly.

for instance, is very easy to write syntax highlighting for.

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Syntax highlighting is only a small part of what we're doing with Npp. Otherwise, just the user-defined dialog of Npp would be sufficient. Click-and-tag, tooltips ... these make for real user-friendliness.

Thanks for the criticism and

Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shīʿī Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 ______________________________**______________________________** _______________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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-- Blog: http://amca01.wordpress.com Web: http://bit.ly/Alasdair Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alasdair.mcandrew

On Sun, 2011-08-14 at 16:39 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

Wow, that would be great if we got tens of millions of users to buy the Book :D :D :D

;)

Well, most people using Linux have some technical facility, so they can configure their own editors.

I don't know about that. That might have been the case in the early part of the previous decade, but not so any more. Ubuntu changed all that, with a large portion of its demographic being "regular users". Most of them are not programmers.

That is actually one option I'm considering. In any case.

e.g. an appendix for gedit, one for Npp, one for Scite, Gleany, whatever.

I did look at gedit, but for the current vision I have for introducing ConTeXt to non-technical folks it does not work.

How so? I use it regularly for ConTeXt code. You just have to use the LaTeX syntax highlighting, but writing a ConTeXt one should be straightforward to someone familiar with ConTeXt. The LaTex syntax highlighting that comes with gedit could be used as a fast starter.

Actually, I spent months checking for a better candidate than Npp, experimenting with just about everything I could get my hands on. On balance Npp got the best score on all the benchmarks I set. That's not to say I wouldn't prefer something better, but that decision is done, only to be revisited if something really AMAZING happens in the next few months.

I'm not disagreeing with you that Npp might be great for beginnings, I'm just saying that many beginners can't use it because it isn't available for their operating system.

WinEdt would really have been be my ideal choice -- but the lack of unicode, bidi is just a non-starter. TeXWorks has a long way to go, and although I'm a fan of Qt its open-type implementation is buggy; so some Arabic-monospaced fonts don't show up correctly.

It's actually an even worse choice than Npp in the sense that, not only is it available only for Windows, it's non-free.

Syntax highlighting is only a small part of what we're doing with Npp. Otherwise, just the user-defined dialog of Npp would be sufficient. Click-and-tag, tooltips ... these make for real user-friendliness.

True enough. I agree that a GUI would be really great.

Thanks for the criticism and

Best wishes Idris

Take care and good luck with the book! I'll probably get a copy myself. -- Kip Warner -- Software Engineer OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred http://www.thevertigo.com

Am 15.08.2011 08:42, schrieb Martin Schröder:

2011/8/15 Kip Warner:

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On Sun, 2011-08-14 at 16:39 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

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unicode, bidi is just a non-starter. TeXWorks has a long way to go, and although I'm a fan of Qt its open-type implementation is buggy; so some Arabic-monospaced fonts don't show up correctly.

It's actually an even worse choice than Npp in the sense that, not only is it available only for Windows, it's non-free.

Are we both talking about http://code.google.com/p/texworks/ ? Because that's free (GPLv2) and runs on Windows, OSX and Linux.

and comes with a ready made ConTeXt configuration ... Herbert

On Mon, 2011-08-15 at 08:42 +0200, Martin Schröder wrote:

Are we both talking about http://code.google.com/p/texworks/ ? Because that's free (GPLv2) and runs on Windows, OSX and Linux.

Best Martin

Hey Martin. I meant WinEdt. Sorry for the ambiguity. -- Kip Warner -- Software Engineer OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred http://www.thevertigo.com

On 08/15/2011 09:16 AM, luigi scarso wrote:

2011/8/15 Kip Warner:

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I'm not disagreeing with you that Npp might be great for beginnings, I'm just saying that many beginners can't use it because it isn't available for their operating system. Under linux Wine sometimes does a great job.

I, for one, am not willing to start wine to run something as basic as a text editor.

On Mon, 2011-08-15 at 09:20 +0200, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

I, for one, am not willing to start wine to run something as basic as a text editor.

My sentiments precisely. -- Kip Warner -- Software Engineer OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred http://www.thevertigo.com

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 09:20, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

And from what I see on this list, I'm not sure winblows users are the majority.

According to statistics of distribution downloads (just counting unique IPs, so not absolutely accurate), windows users amount to 17-20% downloads. Wiki gets 46% of windows users. (I'm worried a bit about the high discrepancy in numbers, in particular if you keep in mind that many might be using TeX Live under Linux, bundled with their distribution, however ConTeXt doesn't even work on MikTeX.) Mojca

On 08/15/2011 09:46 AM, Florian Wobbe wrote:

Have you ever googled for something context related? You end up mostly with false positives because "context" can appear just in any context. I wonder if all those windows hits are from people who searched for any other "context" and ended up on the wiki by mistake...

And, being true windows users, take 30 minutes to figure out they're on the wrong page :-) Thomas

2011/8/15 Florian Wobbe :

Have you ever googled for something context related? You end up mostly with false positives because "context" can appear just in any context.

They even have their own conference: http://context-11.teco.edu :-) Best Martin

On Mon, 2011-08-15 at 09:20 +0200, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

*If* the linux user happens to have 150 bucks and thinks it's a good idea to give that to Microsoft. No thanks. It's of course way too early to say anything about a project that I haven't seen a single line of, but tying it to an editor which is not cross-platform strikes me as a poor choice. And from what I see on this list, I'm not sure winblows users are the majority.

Thomas

Agreed. -- Kip Warner -- Software Engineer OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred http://www.thevertigo.com

On 08/15/2011 11:51 AM, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

Dear Knights,

A lot of the criticism seems to miss the point :-)

Part of the aim of the Book is to bring in new users, most of us here already know what we're doing. And M$-Windows dominates the marketplace for better or for worse.

I want to break out of the usual paradigm of presenting TeX and try something new and fresh. I want to give ConTeXt to my (or your) secretary, not just to geeks like most of us. I want to get them rolling as smoothly as possible. Telling a total newbie to go find one's own editor is not going to expand the ConTeXt ecosystem very efficiently.

As I said, the Book will not be "tied" to an editor. But I will use one as a way of easing the way for the maximum number of total non-geeks to get involved with ConTeXt. That's part of the vision I have.

Hi Idris, I'm a ConTeXt newbie (although I have been using LaTeX for 10 years). I'd use TeXworks as the editor, since it is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. And it can be installed with TeXLive (and updated with TLContrib). Remember: one install to rule them all ;-). So you avoid having to implement lexer scripting. BTW, I guess you plan to release the book under standard copyright license, do you? (Just asking.) Just in case it helps, Pablo -- http://www.ousia.tk

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:38:42 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

The functionality I can extract from Npp gives a pedagogical advantage that's important for what I'm trying to achieve. For example, dbl-click a word and get a context-menu that allows you to tag that word without typing braces. I can even assign a shortcut so that I can tag a word and, eg, emphasize it without typing. Or type a ConTeXt command and get a list of options so you don't have to look at the manual.

Take a look at this: http://tinypic.com/r/andfsn/7 In addition to the ConTeXt functionality note the new Arabic add-on to lm-mono, so for the first time we'll have an actually useful Arabic mono font where one can edit vowels etc. Unfortunately the opentype engine in, e.g., TeXWorks cannot handle the GSUB table properly. Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shīʿī Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

Hi Martin, On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:35:24 -0600, Martin Schröder wrote:

2011/8/15 Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد :

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Believe me, I've looked at just about every option out there :-)

I believe you. And I think the editor is a typical bikeshed. :-) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviali...

LOL, I think you're right :-)

I applaud your efforts.

I greatly appreciate that!

What's the planned release date?

Depends on the publisher, but there's no contract yet. If they pass on the chapters I send them, I'll self-publish it somehow.

Will you include software?

That's the plan, and the editor fits into that idea as well. Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shīʿī Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

Hi Kip, On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:43:40 -0600, Kip Warner wrote:

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And M$-Windows dominates the marketplace for better or for worse.

Hey Idris. I think what the folks here are saying is that that's not necessarily true - for ConTeXt.

Yes!! That's _exactly_ the challenge! My vision is for ConTeXt to break out of the shell! :-) Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shīʿī Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 01:16:55PM -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

Yes!! That's _exactly_ the challenge! My vision is for ConTeXt to break out of the shell!

:-)

Best wishes Idris --

Hi Idris, As a tech writer for 27+ years, who is a recent Context newbie, I applaud your efforts and wish you the best. I just recently have been in the middle of a paradigm change myself, going from Xywrite on the PC to trying to learn and use Context and using vim/gvim as my editor. Back in 1988 or so, when i was employed at TI, we were tasked with trying to get people to use the then new Ventura Publisher for creating documents, etc. This was all pre- Windows. As a result of that i can understand your concern for having a complete system in place for your new users. Everything has to be in place. I too look forward to your book. I also look forward to seeing some examples using an Arabic font. My wife is Persian so I've gained an appreciation for typography with regard to this language also. The fact that Context as well as Vim could handle these fonts well were factors in my trying to learn them. Keep up the good work. Russ