Hi Andrea, Regarding the installation of TeX and ConTeXt I did it for my daughter who is a biologist, on a MacBook: this is quite easy with MacTeX. Then it is enough to tell your students to do in a Terminal window: sudo ctxtools --updatecontext For LuaTeX it is a little bit more complexe, since the first installation is more tricky for the non specialist.

On 10 juin 08, at 16:43, Andrea Valle wrote:

...

Hmm, with Luatex I can use system fonts like in XeTeX. Am I right? […]

It seems that yes, but I couldn't setup things correctly on my machine… (MacBook Pro + MacOS X 10.5.3 + TeXShop + GWTeX). If you succeed, please let me know how. Best regards: OK

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:34:15 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:

Andrea Valle wrote:

...

Hmm, with Luatex I can use system fonts like in XeTeX. Am I right?

yes, if you set up OSFONTDIR

I would like to set up OSFONTDIR, but I don't know how or where or when to do so. I've tried setting it in my bash profile, and that seems to have no effect. What is the correct procedure? (I'm on a Mac, if it matters.) Thanks David

In my experience the font switching issue (complicated for newbies) is the only relevant negative feature in ConTeXt. So, if I have Luatex I can forget xetex? Best -a- On 10 Jun 2008, at 19:37, Hans Hagen wrote:

David wrote:

...

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:34:15 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

Andrea Valle wrote:

...

Hmm, with Luatex I can use system fonts like in XeTeX. Am I right? yes, if you set up OSFONTDIR

I would like to set up OSFONTDIR, but I don't know how or where or when to do so. I've tried setting it in my bash profile, and that seems to have no effect. What is the correct procedure? (I'm on a Mac, if it matters.)

we can consider setting it up automatically but that can only be done when it's a stable location

Hans

----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl ----------------------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________________ _____________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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-------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 3:22 AM, David wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:37:11 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

David wrote:

...

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:34:15 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

Andrea Valle wrote:

...

Hmm, with Luatex I can use system fonts like in XeTeX. Am I right? yes, if you set up OSFONTDIR

I would like to set up OSFONTDIR, but I don't know how or where or when to do so. I've tried setting it in my bash profile, and that seems to have no effect. What is the correct procedure? (I'm on a Mac, if it matters.)

we can consider setting it up automatically but that can only be done when it's a stable location

Well, that would be excellent from my point of view, of course. But my question is much more simple: I only want to know, where and when do I type "OSFONTDIR=..."?

I've read many times that in order to use it I need to "set it up", but I actually don't know what "set it up" means in this situation.

It's a system variable. Under Linux you can set it up in your /home/YOUR_NICKNAME/.bashrc file, adding : export OSFONTDIR=THE_PATH_TO_YOUR_FONT_DIR At the end of the file. There's certainly the same under Mac. Olivier. -- [Message tapé sur un clavier Bépo : http://www.clavier-dvorak.org ] Olivier nemolivier@gmail.com http://nemolivier.blogspot.com

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Andrea Valle wrote:

Have you ever tried to install minimals (http://minimals.contextgarden.net/)?

No, frankly I am a bit scared of tweaking my actual distro...

You don't need to tweak it. You just download it and run . setuptex whenever you need it. If you don't run the command and don't have the PATH set, your usual distribution will be used.

More, I think I have some problems with my unix env. But I'll try. But: the linked files are mk II?

Which files?

If I want system fonts shouldn't I go for luatex?

LuaTeX or XeTeX, yes. But they're included in the distribution.

So, if I have Luatex I can forget xetex?

Depends on how many bugs you can still handle ... :) If you're careful, you should be able to process the same file with both XeTeX and LuaTeX. Mojca

Hi Oliver,

I've already assembled a working ConTeXt package based on the minimals that installs via the Apple installer. In other words, it will provide the same seamless installation experience to the user as known from the MacTeX package and, in fact, as known from any decent Mac software.

Fantastic. Exactly what I need. But will you include TeXShop? Will the tex file system be local (i.e. separated from the usual locations) ?

That's actually pretty soon.

Yes, of course. Thanks Best -a-

Oliver

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-------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

Wow, much needed. Looking forward to see it. Best -a- On 11 Jun 2008, at 18:05, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Andrea Valle wrote:

...

Hi Oliver,

I've already assembled a working ConTeXt package based on the minimals that installs via the Apple installer. In other words, it will provide the same seamless installation experience to the user as known from the MacTeX package and, in fact, as known from any decent Mac software.

Fantastic. Exactly what I need. But will you include TeXShop?

You can use the existing TeXShop or any other editor. Besides that, in summer or autumn a new cross-platform editor by Jonathan Kew will be available.

...

Will the tex file system be local (i.e. separated from the usual locations) ?

You will be able to use PreferencePane to select whether you want to use MacTeX or ConTeXt minimals (and which version), and that will be done globally. /usr/texbin will be a symlink to binaries.

Mojca ______________________________________________________________________ _____________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________ _____________

-------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

The fact IMHO is that there's a potentially large base of ConTeXt users which are willing to learn the syntax but are scared about terminals, setting paths etc (well, me too: knowing substantially nothing of unix I'm never comfortable with unix aspects of my system) So, an installer is really welcome. Best -a- On 11 Jun 2008, at 22:43, Jesse Alama wrote:

I second Andrea's opinion -- I'm also looking forward to a straightforward way of updating ConTeXt and kin. I'm comfortable with

ctxtools --updatecontext,

but much less comfortable updating binaries and fonts, based on my experience screwing up my installation; a nice Mac OS X interface to deal with all these would be great. How about allowing installation of modules from http://modules.contextgarden.net, too?

(I admit that there's probably a good deal of FUD here on my part and it's not as complicated as I think it is. My guess, though, is that I'm not alone.)

Jesse

Andrea Valle writes:

...

Wow, much needed. Looking forward to see it.

Best

-a-

On 11 Jun 2008, at 18:05, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Andrea Valle wrote:

Hi Oliver,

I've already assembled a working ConTeXt package based on the minimals that installs via the Apple installer. In other words, it will provide the same seamless installation experience to the user as known from the MacTeX package and, in fact, as known from any decent Mac software.

Fantastic. Exactly what I need. But will you include TeXShop?

You can use the existing TeXShop or any other editor. Besides that, in summer or autumn a new cross-platform editor by Jonathan Kew will be available.

Will the tex file system be local (i.e. separated from the usual locations) ?

You will be able to use PreferencePane to select whether you want to use MacTeX or ConTeXt minimals (and which version), and that will be done globally. /usr/texbin will be a symlink to binaries.

Mojca

_____________________________________________________________________ ______________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/ listinfo/ ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net

_____________________________________________________________________ ______________

-------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it --------------------------------------------------

" Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

_____________________________________________________________________ ______________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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-- Jesse Alama (alama@stanford.edu)

______________________________________________________________________ _____________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ______________________________________________________________________ _____________

-------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

If if you got it installed, you next will need a GUI for running ConTeXt, and if some problem arises, you are further away from the solution than ever. :-(

Sorry, you can't use TeX in a decent way if you can't use a shell (AKA command line AKA Terminal AKA DOS box).

That's not true. Installing mactex doesn't require you to use terminal. It comes with TeXShop. Works out of the box. That was my first ConTeXt experience. Positive. Then I went into some memory problems with MetaPost, then I had to modify some sources (thanks to Mojca) to work with XeTeX. Really a boring experience. Please don't tell me that the tree structure of the TeX distro is easy to understand and traverse.

Please everyone try to become computer literate! (see also works by Friedrich Kittler)

I agree with you. But it depends on what "computer literate" means. For me computer science is the science of algorithms (see the definition of Schneider and Gersting). So, I'm interested in a higher level perspective. Otherwise, I could start from assembler. Note also that I'm always teaching computer programming to students in humanities. I'm asking them big steps into computer literacy. But I cannot exaggerate. I'm teaching them SuperCollider and Nodebox. I'd like to teach ConTeXt focusing in computational typography, not into unix file system (even if it can be very relevant). Note also that from the previous posts I still have not exactly understood what I have to do to install Luatex (the famous minimals), and it seems that many people are confused like me on using system fonts. I'm scared of tweaking my actual XeConTeXt distro because to install it has been a pain. Of course, everyone on the mailing list here is very friendly and helpful, but I'd like not to bore you all with install troubles. Best -a-

--------------------------------------------------

Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- I did this interview where I just mentioned that I read Foucault. Who doesn't in university, right? I was in this strip club giving this guy a lap dance and all he wanted to do was to discuss Foucault with me. Well, I can stand naked and do my little dance, or I can discuss Foucault, but not at the same time; too much information. (Annabel Chong) -------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

Am 2008-06-13 um 19:08 schrieb Andrea Valle:

...

Sorry, you can't use TeX in a decent way if you can't use a shell (AKA command line AKA Terminal AKA DOS box). That's not true. Installing mactex doesn't require you to use terminal. It comes with TeXShop. Works out of the box. That was my first =20 ConTeXt experience. Positive. Then I went into some memory problems with MetaPost, then I had to =20 modify some sources (thanks to Mojca) to work with XeTeX. Really a boring experience. Please don't tell me that the tree =20 structure of the TeX distro is easy to understand and traverse.

You're right, the TeX tree is more of a shrubbery. And I don't say Ni ;-) For directory trees I really like the Finder in columns mode - and it's great that you can just drag a file or folder to the Terminal to get its path inserted. I stopped using TeXshop and iTeXMac (not a positive experience some years ago), because I often need to call ConTeXt (i.e. texexec) with different arguments, and that's overly complicated with GUI tools. And I found the (La)TeX integration more annoying than helpful for ConTeXt. iTeXMac's project "files" (app-like directories) are annoying as well. I do most of my development in Eclipse or TextWrangler, but always with a Terminal or three. I use a simple shell script for every project, that runs the main file with appropriate arguments, opens the resulting PDF (with LilyPond also the MIDI) and cleans the temp files afterwards. Even with GUI layout projects I normally have a Terminal open - e.g. for quick (batch) renaming (renaming is one of the few really annoying mis-features of MacOS X - "YES I REALLY WANT TO CHANGE THE EXTENSION AND I KNOW WHAT I DO, DAMNED!"). You see, I'm not a shell dogmatist - I normally use vi only on remote servers, and I don't run EmacsOS - but I work much more efficiently if I can use a decent shell. (sh on AIX or CMD.EXE on Win2k is not a decent shell...)

...

Please everyone try to become computer literate! (see also works by Friedrich Kittler) I agree with you. But it depends on what "computer literate" means. ... I'm teaching them SuperCollider and Nodebox.

Ok, I don't get those ;-)

I'd like to teach =20 ConTeXt focusing in computational typography, not into unix file =20 system (even if it can be very relevant). Note also that from the previous posts I still have not exactly =20 understood what I have to do to install Luatex (the famous minimals), =20= and it seems that many people are confused like me on using system =20 fonts. I'm scared of tweaking my actual XeConTeXt distro because to install =20 it has been a pain.

I know the pain. It was always a hassle to get ConTeXt working with teTeX, even with gwTeX or MacTeX. (I never got it working with CMacTeX, but that was a previous chapter.) The minimals solved it for me. As soon as I had understood how to use first-setup and setuptex. Now I start setuptex in my .profile, so that every new Terminal is pre- configured. (You can also use .bashrc or .bash_profile) And I run first-setup for updates regularly as a cron job, together with some other update scripts. I still feel a bit uncomfortable with "systems fonts", too: I activate fonts with FontExplorer as I need them, so ConTeXt normally can't find my fonts. We should try to write a XeTeX/LuaTeX-plugin for FontExplorer... Before I had installed a lot of fonts in my personal texmf tree (where they don't eat my RAM), many of them I've only as PFB and can't use them as system fonts on OSX. Besides that, a lot of "system fonts" aren't available for ConTeXt (fontconfig problems, I guess). If I would use ConTeXt more often, I would have figured that out, I guess...

--Apple-Mail-101-993969544 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Oops, since when decided my Apple Mail to send MIME/HTML mails?? It mustn't do that... Bad program, BAAAD program! Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

Am 2008-06-13 um 20:26 schrieb Matthias Weber:

...

Even with GUI layout projects I normally have a Terminal open - e.g. for quick (batch) renaming (renaming is one of the few really annoying mis-features of MacOS X - "YES I REALLY WANT TO CHANGE THE EXTENSION AND I KNOW WHAT I DO, DAMNED!").

Change your finder preferences for this one. That's about as hard as setting a path variable.

I changed it already on my new home mac (running Leopard); but there's no preference on previous versions (i.e. at work and on my ibook). Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

...

If if you got it installed, you next will need a GUI for running ConTeXt, and if some problem arises, you are further away from the solution than ever. :-(

Sorry, you can't use TeX in a decent way if you can't use a shell (AKA command line AKA Terminal AKA DOS box).

Otherwise we get a system where everything is configured "under the hood" by some administrator - and you are in really bad luck if you happen to be your own newborn administrator and read everywhere "if you don't know what to fill in here, go ask your administrator".

Please everyone try to become computer literate! (see also works by Friedrich Kittler)

You took the words out of my mouth; I was going to write in a similar vein. Creating a GUI installer will only give false hopes to the "potentially large base of users." They may be able to install, but will soon run into trouble which can't be solved without a little knowledge of the command line, about paths and configuration files. If you're a billionaire, you could pay a couple dozen programmers to write a GUI for all these settings. But as long as no Mark Shuttleworth pops up, I think it would be better to avoid any misunderstandings. If you're allergic to the command line, TeX is not for you.

Actually, I strongly disagree with the opinion that the only way to properly interact with TeX is via the command line. Counter example: in Mac application development your IDE of choice will almost certainly be Xcode. Although it delegates the entire compilation process to gcc you *never* ever see the command line. And there's no need to. All errors and warnings output by gcc are intercepted and passed on to you via the graphical IDE and you won't lose a tiny bit of information. In fact you gain a lot when trying to track down a problem ... Furthermore, in my humble opinion interaction with TeX should concentrate on programming the actual typesetting language and not on fumbling around with dozens of configuration files ... for instance, if you develop applications you wouldn't want to reconfigure your compiler twice a week either but rather focus on the source code *you* write. Oliver

What I said is: you can provide all the GUI tools you want, at some point (and this will be rather sooner than later) problems will crop up, and these problems will be impossible to resolve if you don't want to use the command line, don't want to learn about PATH settings, don't want to learn about where configuration files go and what they do.

Thomas, I do not know what Oliver is actually doing. But just 2c: - suppose you have a ConTeXt distro (the minimal) inside a mac app. At the end a mac app is typically a folder containing different programs/libraries etc - suppose you are provided inside the app of an editor (say, TeXShop) already configured to read in the app's folder. In sum, you have a TeXShop ready to go for the ConTeXt in the app. Then, you have a context distro working out of the box. It can be installed easily. You have always worked with Word and you want to try to work with ConTeXt? Download, drag and drop, open. There shouldn't been configuration problems (they have been solved while creating the installer). If there are bugs depending on ConTeXt, as usual in case of an app, the user has to wait for a next release of the app including the new ConTeXt version. (with a bit more expertise, maybe you can simply replace the right folder inside the mac app) This is indeed a limit, but the previous points can be pros for another user.

colorful pointy-clicky interface.

Not so much colorful, not so much pointy-clicky. Just local, self-contained, with an editor. No? Best -a- -------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- I did this interview where I just mentioned that I read Foucault. Who doesn't in university, right? I was in this strip club giving this guy a lap dance and all he wanted to do was to discuss Foucault with me. Well, I can stand naked and do my little dance, or I can discuss Foucault, but not at the same time; too much information. (Annabel Chong) -------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

Am 2008-06-14 um 19:36 schrieb Thomas A. Schmitz:

bundle that does just what you like is lilypond. A wonderful typesetting application, all in one installer, not complex to install. It has been broken on intel mac for half a year now. Nobody has the knowledge or the time or the energy to fix it. Result? No lilypond for intel mac users.

By the way LilyPond works again, since a month or so. But just lilypond, not midi2ly etc. And you can use the PPC version on Intel, too. You could even try to install it from source without the Mac.app stuff (perhaps even via fink) - don't know if you'll run into difficult library problems, though, didn't try. That doesn't invalidate your point, though. If you install ConTeXt as a nice Mac.app, you'd need an integrated package/plugin manager and someone who provides updates and additions as suitable packages. Similar to Eclipse, perhaps, and even if that works mostly, there stay problems where you need to poke around in the file tree. Of course, since ConTeXt is much more monolithic (or "batteries included") than LaTeX (or Eclipse), you don't need a lot of packages, you could even include all known third-party modules and automate daily updates. And you could limit the font support to included LM plus system fonts. So it could be done. For OSX, that is. Maybe even multiplatform, if you use something like Python with wxPython and setuptools. But I think it's not worth the effort - who could do it, doesn't need it. As was said, you'd have to pay some developers for that - for a really small audience. Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

Who said that "the only way to properly interact with TeX is via the command line"? What I said is: you can provide all the GUI tools you want, at some point (and this will be rather sooner than later) problems will crop up, and these problems will be impossible to resolve if you don't want to use the command line, don't want to learn about PATH settings, don't want to learn about where configuration files go and what they do. This may be different in, say 10 years, but it would be misleading to pretend that it is different today. TeXLive 2008 is just being tested, and in this regard, it's no better than its predecessors. Unless and until we have systems which will be easier to maintain, users who expect to be able to stay away from the CLI are bound to be disappointed.

Not necessarily I guess. See below.

Your example about Apple's Xcode actually proves my point: I said that if you can afford to throw a couple of million $ and a dozen programmers at this, it is actually feasible (but will still take time). Apple has done just that; the Xcode IDE hasn't been built by volunteers in their spare time, now has it?

That's right. My point though is that once the installation has been done via a GUI (a rather simple one suffices, by the way) there's no need for knowing about paths and configuration files. (That is, if the installation package doesn't happen to be buggy in the first place …) And this also applies to updates unless you want to perform them manually. However, I don't think many people would think of updating any large software environment (Xcode, KDE, Gnome, … whatever) without the help of a GUI package manager. I also doubt the end user will ever have to tweak any configuration files of TeXLive. Neither would they be willing to. I wonder why this has to be different for ConTeXt …

As for "fumbling around with dozens of configuration files": such exaggerations are not very helpful in this discussion.

Well, until roughly two weeks ago, this wouldn't have been too exaggerated though ... now thanks to Hans' and Taco's efforts this has improved vastly! There's probably still some way to go. Oliver

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Jesse Alama wrote:

"Thomas A. Schmitz" writes:

The basis for my own comments in this thread do not lie in a preference for graphical tools, but rather for a straightforward way to stay up-to-date with the whole of ConTeXt in a way that ctxtools does not currently provide. A command-line interface for that would be great, and so would a graphical tool.

That's not a general solution, but if you need it for yourself, you can put the following to some file and execute it whenever you want: rsync -av rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/current/context/beta/ /path/to/your/texmf/ rsync -av rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/current/bin/luatex/linux/bin/ /path/to/your/binaries/ etc. There's a limited set of folders that you need to update, and it will only update new files, you don't need to update everything. Mojca

On Sun, 2008-06-15 at 01:05 +0200, Diego Depaoli wrote:

Furthermore let me doubt that a simplified installation it's enough to persuade new users since ConTeXt requires manuals reading which is universally considered a waste of time.

In many cases, the nouveau Linux culture or Win/Mac users may not necessarily like to RTFMP, (P for Please) but anyone with any long-term Unix exposure does, because that's how it goes. ConTeXt makes its manuals far easier to get to than others in many cases. Linux man pages are lame. Mac man pages are decent because they come from BSD, but lots of Mac users hardly ever use Terminal. Windows users wouldn't know a man page if you hit them with one. But even commercial DTP on Mac and Win has some kind of HTML-based set of manuals/tutorials that they really encourage people to use. Once people are beyond your average office suite, they just have to read manuals or know design. That's why there's tons of stuff out there on the net. Same goes for web design. So I think that, by the time you get to ConTeXt, you might have to accept the old RTFMP as a sine qua non. I find the ConTeXt manuals to be exceptional, and I hope to sit down soon at least with the main ConTeXt EN manual and mark it up where I find editorial issues. I started using ConTeXt only recently and already I was able to do a book mock-up with endpapers, title page, indicia page, TOC, various front matter, chapters, appropriate page headings, and so on. Were I trying to use LaTeX or plain (I was seriously considering Lollipop) I would still be wanking around with it. So I've found the manuals invaluable. True, maybe something that is both really slow for beginners and faster for the experienced as an HTML-based set, either on-line or downloadable, wouldn't be bad to have. I actually have some of my own ideas for the topology of something like that. One thing that trips me up is not knowing when some bit of plain TeX should or should not be used. In any case, everyone using something TeX-related can benefit from the TeXbook. I enjoy it thoroughly. Charles

Furthermore let me doubt that a simplified installation it's enough to persuade new users since ConTeXt requires manuals reading which is universally considered a waste of time.

Hmm, Diego, that's not the point IMHO. We have to decouple installation from use. I'm an example of a user who will appreciate a simplified installer and will keep reading manuals (Matthias seems to agree with me). It's an interesting thread, but at the end I'm convinced that, simply, we are in a do-cracy. If Oliver has time, he will release an installer for mac. Otherwise, Andrea Valle will simply keep complaining. Obviously, Hans has more important things to do (I'm pretty serious here). Best -a- -------------------------------------------------- Andrea Valle -------------------------------------------------- CIRMA - DAMS Università degli Studi di Torino --> http://www.cirma.unito.it/andrea/ --> http://www.myspace.com/andreavalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " Think of it as seasoning . noise [salt] is boring . F(blah) [food without salt] can be boring . F(noise, blah) can be really tasty " (Ken Perlin on noise)

Hi Jesse,

1. What's the difference between getting the texmf tree using rsync, as you suggest, and using ctxtools --updatecontext? Are those equivalent?

You might read the underneath thread from here on, as well as its later posts... http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20080620.070341.aca1fbd9.en.html Maybe this short one also... http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20080621.153103.9fcfc856.en.html Hope this helps, Alan On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Jesse Alama wrote:

"Mojca Miklavec" writes:

...

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Jesse Alama wrote:

...

"Thomas A. Schmitz" writes:

The basis for my own comments in this thread do not lie in a preference for graphical tools, but rather for a straightforward way to stay up-to-date with the whole of ConTeXt in a way that ctxtools does not currently provide. A command-line interface for that would be great, and so would a graphical tool.

That's not a general solution, but if you need it for yourself, you can put the following to some file and execute it whenever you want:

rsync -av rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/current/context/beta/ /path/to/your/texmf/ rsync -av rsync:// contextgarden.net/minimals/current/bin/luatex/linux/bin/ /path/to/your/binaries/ etc.

There's a limited set of folders that you need to update, and it will only update new files, you don't need to update everything.

Two questions:

1. What's the difference between getting the texmf tree using rsync, as you suggest, and using ctxtools --updatecontext? Are those equivalent?

2. It looks like the subdirectories that I want are

common context luatex man metapost

if I want to follow only luatex development. (The only subdirectories that aren't in that list are mswin, which doesn't apply to me, and pdftex and xetex.) I'd like to just put this on top of my TeXLive (2007) distribution. Once I copy thse binaries to my TeXLive binary directory, what's the next step? Do I need to rebuild the ConTeXt format, for example?

What I'm looking for is a way to keep up-to-date with ConTeXt and LuaTeX development; I'd rather not keep a separate installation with all and only ConTeXt in it, together with a shell script that sets up *only* ConTeXt. I'm happy to keep up-to-date by overwriting the relevant parts of my TeXLive distribution with the freshest texmf and binaries. That way, within a single shell I can use the freshest ConTeXt as well as LaTeX and pacakges from the TeX Collection. Perhaps I am going against the intention of the "minimal installation"; but the discussion of how to get a minimal ConTeXt installation overlaps with the discussion of how to stay up-to-date. I'm more interested in the latter than the former. Perhaps the best thing for such a user would be to just track the TeXLive development tree using cvs or rsync. I'm curious to hear any suggetions.

Thanks,

Jesse

-- Jesse Alama (alama@stanford.edu)

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 5:20 AM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Jesse Alama wrote:

...

"Mojca Miklavec" writes:

...

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Jesse Alama wrote:

...

"Thomas A. Schmitz" writes:

The basis for my own comments in this thread do not lie in a preference for graphical tools, but rather for a straightforward way to stay up-to-date with the whole of ConTeXt in a way that ctxtools does not currently provide. A command-line interface for that would be great, and so would a graphical tool.

That's not a general solution, but if you need it for yourself, you can put the following to some file and execute it whenever you want:

rsync -av rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/current/context/beta/ /path/to/your/texmf/ rsync -av rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/current/bin/luatex/linux/bin/ /path/to/your/binaries/ etc.

There's a limited set of folders that you need to update, and it will only update new files, you don't need to update everything.

Two questions:

1. What's the difference between getting the texmf tree using rsync,

It only downloads newer files & you can fetch binaries

...

as you suggest, and using ctxtools --updatecontext? Are those equivalent?

It downleady the whole zip every time you call it.

...

2. It looks like the subdirectories that I want are

common context luatex man metapost

if I want to follow only luatex development. (The only subdirectories that aren't in that list are mswin, which doesn't apply to me, and pdftex and xetex.) I'd like to just put this on top of my TeXLive (2007) distribution.

What I did to enable current context with my TL is: 1. create a seaprate texmf-ctx tree that is populated from the .zip archive 2. create a parallel bin/i386-linux-l directory and put it before /usr/local/texlive/2007/bin/i386-linux in the path. Note that this should have symbolic links to the scripts in the texmf-ctx tree to ensure that the current scripts are used. 3. copy the updated binaries to the bin/i386-linux-l directory

What about trying to install TeX Live 2008? It desperately needs testers at the moment, and all that you will need to do to stay up to date is fetching: - luatex - context itself - maybe luatool & mtxrun

...

Once I copy thse binaries to my TeXLive binary directory, what's the next step? Do I need to rebuild the ConTeXt format, for example?

Yes.

It is important to catch as many problems in TL2008 as we can now, and it is intended to have a current ConTeXt. When you use free tools there is some moral duty to help make them good, not only for your own benefit, for for others. Fresh eyes often spot problems that experienced users overlook. -- George N. White III Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia

On Saturday 14 June 2008 07:07:53 am Oliver Buerschaper wrote:

Actually, I strongly disagree with the opinion that the only way to properly interact with TeX is via the command line.

The amount of interaction with TeX in any form is minimal. If it runs to completion fine, if it stalls one can key "x" to abort or "q" to continue with out further error messages What I do is edit the TeX source file in Gvim. I assign F2 to readjusting all the text in Gvim, F3 to running pdftex book.tex. F4 to running texexec book.tex and F5 to running in background kpdf book.pdf I operate from a terminal window on the GUI (KDE in my case.) -- John Culleton Resources for every author and publisher: http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf http://wexfordpress.com/tex/packagers.pdf http://www.creativemindspress.com/newbiefaq.htm http://www.gropenassoc.com/TopLevelPages/reference%20desk.htm

Oleg Kolosov wrote:

Hello!

I'm trying to generate searchable pdf with cyrrillic glyphs with the following:

\enableregime[utf] \mainlanguage[ru] \setupencoding[default=t2a] \useencoding[pfr] \usepdffontresource t2a \usetypescript[pscyr][\defaultencoding] % type-pscyr is my own typescript file \setupbodyfont[pscyr,14pt]

also tried with:

\startencoding[t2a] \usepdffontresource t2a \stopencoding

It seems that \usepdffontresource does nothing. I see pdfr-def loaded in log, but not pdfr-t2a. \input pdfr-t2a (or pdfr-ec) says that \startpdffontresource is undefined command. I've created pdfr-t2a.tex by replacing definitions in pdfr-ec with ones from cmap latex package (found in file t2a.cmap). I'm using ConTeXt mkII since mkIV is in active development. Tried also with ec as default encoding with the same result (pdfr-ec.tex is not loaded).

Please help me create header for minimal file which will generate searchable PDF.

pdftex does it itself (i.e. create the vectors) using pdfr-def.tex (unless i did something wrong) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Oleg Kolosov wrote:

Hans Hagen wrote:

...

Oleg Kolosov wrote:

...

Hello!

I'm trying to generate searchable pdf with cyrrillic glyphs with the following:

\enableregime[utf] \mainlanguage[ru] \setupencoding[default=t2a] \useencoding[pfr] \usepdffontresource t2a \usetypescript[pscyr][\defaultencoding] % type-pscyr is my own typescript file \setupbodyfont[pscyr,14pt]

also tried with:

\startencoding[t2a] \usepdffontresource t2a \stopencoding

It seems that \usepdffontresource does nothing. I see pdfr-def loaded in log, but not pdfr-t2a. \input pdfr-t2a (or pdfr-ec) says that \startpdffontresource is undefined command. I've created pdfr-t2a.tex by replacing definitions in pdfr-ec with ones from cmap latex package (found in file t2a.cmap). I'm using ConTeXt mkII since mkIV is in active development. Tried also with ec as default encoding with the same result (pdfr-ec.tex is not loaded).

Please help me create header for minimal file which will generate searchable PDF.

pdftex does it itself (i.e. create the vectors) using pdfr-def.tex (unless i did something wrong)

Hans

It's unlikely. I've tested it with minimal file and english text is indeed searchable, but cyrillic is not, with copy-paste I get some strange symbols. I'm using type1 fonts from PSCyr package with my own typescript, does this matter? I've attached typescript file just in case (it's still incomplete but works fine for me). Maybe I miss some definition or option? BTW cyrillic in PDF TOC works fine (with inclusion of spec-tst.tex).

can you check if the file has the right entris for your font? pdfr-def.tex the old mechanism is obsolete so pdfr-t2a will not do anything Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------