2009/5/14 R. Bastian :

I would write a french & german intro-source for (quasi absolute) newcomers which need  to have a working system producing PDF texts. But I know nothing about ConTeXt. therefor I cant do anything without your help. A first series of question:

-. Is it necessary to know TeX ? no, if you know Wolfgang :-D

Regards -- Diego Depaoli

R. Bastian wrote:

-. Is it necessary to know TeX ?

I assume it depends on what you are planning to do with ConTeXt. I've been using ConTeXt for at least five years now, but I've never touched TeX (nor LaTeX nor any others, just ConTeXt). I've got a vague idea what it is about and that's it. Some points though: - background in something else than WYSIWYG editing (What You See Is What You Get = Word, for example) helps a lot. Before I started with ConTeXt I'd already done my share of html and I've learned to do structured documents also in word processing (i.e. "mark it heading 1" instead of "make that big and black). - I do ConTeXt pretty much with the "learn-as-you-go" philosophy and when I really have to learn something, I'm pretty determined; most of my ConTeXt usage is at work and if something needs to be done, it has to get done and I can't back off if it seems difficult first. (It took me two days, lot of swearing and a few questions on this mailing list to achieve my first ConTeXt doc in Cyrillic, but I did it in the end. Now it is of course as easy as can be...) - depends on the operationg system and user's backgrouns, too. Those who've used linux/mainframe are probably less likely to be upset by ConTeXt while your average Mac/Windows user may go crazy at the steep start of the learning curve; I'd done some unix and that definitely increased my tolerance. There are days when I swear and yell and curse myself for going over from Word to ConTeXt. But on 9 days out of 10 I pat myself on the back for making the switch. Especially on those styles when MS Word defies all of my attempts to keep a document structurally styled... That's my five cents, Mari