On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Martin Schröder wrote:

Good news - if it isn't an April hoax. :-) if so another beer for me -- luigi

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:

...

Good news - if it isn't an April hoax. :-)

 Martin, you're so evil!  Don't ever ruin my jokes again -- I didn't ruin yours 3 years again (the one where you announced XPSTeX, and said Microsoft would embed pdfTeX in Word).  Fortunately people didn't pay too much attention to your mail :-]

 To all: it was, indeed, an April Fool's joke I suggested to Hans and Taco.  Nobody has offered to pay anyone to write ConTeXt documentation yet, although several people have toyed with the idea of writing a ConTeXt book.  But, even with the incentive of money, time and motivation are also a problem.

 And to the only one who offered help -- Luigi: gloria a te!  It's heartwarming to see truly sincere support.  I'm sorry I have nothing to provide for the moment, but maybe in the near future things will get moving?

       Have a nice Good Friday everyone, So let's see this year what I have won; Taco: ++ beers (one for last year...) Hans: + beer Arthur: + beer Martin: 1/2 beer (* I * remember it) They are 4.5 beers for me --- a good motive to come bachoTeX...hmm..

-- luigi

Ah, I was going to respond in an offlist email to Arthur that I am available for help. My masters thesis, though evolved considerably since I first submitted a vague description some months ago, is still significantly focused on ConTeXt. I will necessarily be documenting the means by which I overcome certain obstacles, achieve certain effects, etc. This will appear through blog posts, and in the end may or may not be typeset into a kind of "Excursion"-style PDF. All this discussion of poor documentation at times brings fear into my enthusiasm for this thesis. On the one hand I do not wish to rely on mk.II, and on the other I've heard people say that any projects they begin in mk.IV end up being written for mk.II for stability purposes. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Anyway, just wanted to say that there was to be at least one more individual offering help. Too bad it turns out to be a joke :/ Regards, John Haltiwanger On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 2-4-2010 11:57, luigi scarso wrote:

...

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Arthur Reutenauer  wrote:

...

...

Good news - if it isn't an April hoax. :-)

 Martin, you're so evil!  Don't ever ruin my jokes again -- I didn't ruin yours 3 years again (the one where you announced XPSTeX, and said Microsoft would embed pdfTeX in Word).  Fortunately people didn't pay too much attention to your mail :-]

 To all: it was, indeed, an April Fool's joke I suggested to Hans and Taco.  Nobody has offered to pay anyone to write ConTeXt documentation yet, although several people have toyed with the idea of writing a ConTeXt book.  But, even with the incentive of money, time and motivation are also a problem.

 And to the only one who offered help -- Luigi: gloria a te!  It's heartwarming to see truly sincere support.  I'm sorry I have nothing to provide for the moment, but maybe in the near future things will get moving?

       Have a nice Good Friday everyone,

So let's see this year what I have won; Taco: ++ beers (one for last year...) Hans: + beer Arthur: + beer Martin: 1/2 beer (* I * remember it)

but that's a german size which is twice the dutch so ...

...

They are 4.5 beers for me --- a good motive to come bachoTeX...hmm..

5 then ... i'd better let you update the modules documentation then before you start drinking (there will be a current next week, so you have plenty of time)

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!

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

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

well, i use mkiv exclusively so that might be a sign that it's not that bad; the main issue is to keep mkiv and luatex in sync

Good to know :) I would much prefer mkiv as well, as luatex seems much easier to grok than TeX. I have the luck to be entering typographical programming at a new stage. To what degree can luatex be relied on to accomplish all that TeX macros can? Does certain functionality still require TeX code? Re: documentation, Perhaps a thing to do in the meantime is start a section on the wiki where we do a command by command description of what different macros accomplish? (Apologies if I'm mincing terminologies here). Starting with the undocumented ones, but then working back and providing a bit of insight into use cases, such as what 'middle' may mean in a given instance, or that it's the best/required option (this point is still fuzzy to me). The command ref is just not insightful at my level of TeX. The thesis case study is concurrent typesetting of itself in HTML, ODT, and ConTeXt. Part of the idea is to interrogate different capabilities and comparing the processes between the formats for accomplishing the same thing (toggle-able sidenotes instead of footnote/endnote citations in ConTeXt vs HTML, for instance). So in that sense there should be more tutorial style content available for the wiki. I'll be pestering the list for help in those areas, I'm sure.

As of right now, Patrick has overstepped his self-imposed deadline for merging the texshow-web data into the wiki by 38 hours and 23 minutes. :)

:-) Actually my load average goes down from 2.3 to 1.0 currently and probably down to 0.5 next week, so I hope not to push my deadline by more then 14 days. Patrick

On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:32:50 -0500

...

...

...

...

...

"Russell" == Russell Urquhart wrote:

Russell> As a tech writer for almost 30 years, and someone just getting Russell> into Context, i am sorry to hear that was a joke! Just see the sad affair of Context's docs so that the 'book' is topic for the April's 1st joke. :-( If it wouldn't be so sad, it would be funny... At the moment I'm looking to learn jQuery and, rest assured, there are several books to choose from. Being a 'book' guy, it's hard to find any significant project without either up-to-date manual or some books available, and I definitely consider that ConTeXt could be one. However, when I ask somewhere about the support for ConTeXt I'm getting answers like: "This is the project which has only 5 or 6 users. Who actually uses it? Use LaTeX!" :-( This raises another concern and that is: what is the future of ConTeXt is Hans "get hit by the bus"? (Of course, we even do not want to think about it...) Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: F96FF5F6 ----------------------------------------------------------------

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 08:47, Alan BRASLAU wrote:

On Saturday 03 April 2010 07:37:36 Gour wrote:

...

However, when I ask somewhere about the support for ConTeXt I'm getting answers like: "This is the project which has only 5 or 6 users. Who actually uses it? Use LaTeX!" :-(

You can use MS-Word - it has a *huge* user base!

I really love that answer :) :) :) And it's definitely true. Much more true than the ConTeXt-to-LaTeX ratio :) ConTeXt has a bus-factor of 1. Well, if you ask me, the whole LaTeX core has bus-factor 0 (apart from some well-maintaned packages; and even those packages usually have bus-factor just a tiny fraction above 1; including TikZ, tex4ht, ...). If you want full support and more guarantee with a higher bus-factor, you should better choose Adobe or Microsoft products and I really mean it. For me it's just fun to browse the sources from time to time ... It is definitely true that a manual is needed (everyone agrees with that), but you need to keep in mind that Hans makes a living with what he does and we can be extremely happy that he releases ConTeXt publically at all (he could just as well keep it in private for himself and his company). Writing a good manual could easily take one-man-year or more, so if some company is willing to pay him for that, he (or some other almost-developer) would probably do it. What nobody here realizes that main developers of jQuery or any other tools probably don't answer dozens of mails daily to beginners' questions on the mailing lists. As already said: anyone is free to start writing a manual by himself. People to help will join later ... Just start. Mojca

Hi, Gour wrote:

Russell> As a tech writer for almost 30 years, and someone just getting Russell> into Context, i am sorry to hear that was a joke!

Just see the sad affair of Context's docs so that the 'book' is topic for the April's 1st joke. :-(

If it wouldn't be so sad, it would be funny...

Personally, I think it is a sad joke that I started a community project to update the reference manual after a lot of complaints about the documentation but over four years down the road the actual community turns out to have a population closely approximating one.

At the moment I'm looking to learn jQuery and, rest assured, there are several books to choose from.

If you could convince mozilla to adopt ConTeXt, I am sure there would be a lot of books within half a year. Have a closer look on books on 'hot topics' like jQuery and you'll see that almost none of these books are written by the inventors themselves. Granted, often the first (and sometimes the best) books are by the inventors, but the *number* of books on a subject just gives an indication of the book market size, nothing more.

However, when I ask somewhere about the support for ConTeXt I'm getting answers like: "This is the project which has only 5 or 6 users. Who actually uses it? Use LaTeX!" :-(

The availability of ConTeXt books will not automatically create more users (nor even automatically create readers, for that matter).

This raises another concern and that is: what is the future of ConTeXt is Hans "get hit by the bus"? (Of course, we even do not want to think about it...)

The answer to this question is quite obvious if you have read Douglas Adams' books: the bus will think about the impact of its actions on the universe for a moment. Then, deeply immersed in gut-wrenching shame, it will travel back in time half a minute and push its own breaks for an emergency stop. Best wishes, Taco

On 3-4-2010 7:37, Gour wrote:

However, when I ask somewhere about the support for ConTeXt I'm getting answers like: "This is the project which has only 5 or 6 users. Who actually uses it? Use LaTeX!" :-(

you must be kidding ... there are some 600 people on this list whih makes it actually not that small tex list; it's also one of the active tex lists also keep in mind that lates (+amsmath) was declared 'a standard' soon after tex surfaced ... just wonder why currently there are only two main macro packages: latex and context .. it sometimes surprises me that eventually we made it to this stage also, quite some developments originate and relate to the context community which might also be a good sign as taco mentions ... 99% of the latex books are not written by lamport also, even today i see books show up that cover the same topics every time so it looks like none of the books is the definitive answer anyway ... idris is writing a context book so push him to speed up

This raises another concern and that is: what is the future of ConTeXt is Hans "get hit by the bus"? (Of course, we even do not want to think about it...)

there are couple of folks out there (and on the list) who know the source code pretty well so i would not worry to much about that 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

On 3-4-2010 1:48, Gour wrote:

On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:51:33 +0200

...

...

...

...

...

> "Hans" == Hans Hagen wrote:

Hello Hans,

Hans> you must be kidding ... there are some 600 people on this list Hans> whih makes it actually not that small tex list; it's also one of Hans> the active tex lists

I just conveyed real message which I got, nothing else, i.e. I did not paint that picture...

Here you can e.g. see reply from the main dev which I got 2 years ago when asked about support for ConTexT in docutils (which does LaTeX): http://article.gmane.org/gmane.text.docutils.user/4404

i've been sent worse examples, like "context is just plain tex" or "context is a package for latex" or "context cannot do math" or ... also "luatex is not going to succees" or "luatex is a bad idea" or ... 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Am 03.04.10 10:59, schrieb Martin Schröder:

Or write a LaTeX module for Context. :-)

http://modules.contextgarden.net/LaTeX Wolfgang

Am 03.04.10 11:20, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

http://modules.contextgarden.net/LaTeX

what do you think about luaLaTeX compatibility module for ConTeX-mkiv ?

1. The LaTeX module is from Brooks Moses, not me. 2. What do you expect from a LuaLaTeX module? Wolfgang

luigi scarso wrote:

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

...

2. What do you expect from a LuaLaTeX module? \usemodule[latex] and then all things in latex/base/* work ok (and only these ones).

Sounds like a good goal, but it will need a new maintainer, I think. However, Brooks seems to have left us, and I myself lost my interest in LaTeX compatibility (I wrote a fair bit of the module code, back when I had a commercial project that was originally latex and wanted to be able to cut and paste esp. the tabular material). Best wishes, Taco

Am 03.04.10 15:01, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

2. What do you expect from a LuaLaTeX module?

\usemodule[latex] and then all things in latex/base/* work ok (and only these ones).

And what's with the Lua part you want? Wolfgang

Am 03.04.10 15:42, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

And what's with the Lua part you want?

encoding

\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} -> \enableregime[latin1] and convert latex encoding names to context names but that's possible with pure tex code

font management

i doubt latex’s and context’s system can be mixed (without ugly hacks) or do you mean a higher system like fontspec and luaotfload

name space to avoid macro collision

tex macros or lua functions (can you be more concrete)? Wolfgang

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 3:53 PM, luigi scarso wrote:

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Wolfgang Schuster

...

\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} -> \enableregime[latin1] encoding are gone -- luigi

Am 03.04.10 15:53, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

...

font managemen i doubt latex’s and context’s system can be mixed (without ugly hacks) or do you mean a higher system like fontspec and luaotfload

these ones

The code for luaotfload is taken from ConTeXt. A high level interface like fontspec is not so hard (see simplefonts) and the information you need for optical sized fonts (like Latin Modern or Minion Pro) are there since November last year, e.g. this is the entry for LM Roman 12 { designsize=120, familyname="latinmodernroman", filename="lmroman12-regular.otf", fontname="lmroman12regular", format="otf", fullname="lmroman12regular", maxsize=140, minsize=110, modifiers="12regular", rawname="LMRoman12-Regular", style="normal", subfamily="regular", variant="normal", weight="normal", width="normal", },

...

...

name space to avoid macro collision

tex macros or lua functions (can you be more concrete)?

tex macros

Possible with internal commands but you can run into problems with the user commands, a problem is also how LaTeX handle environments For \begin{env} LaTeX expects a macro with the name \<env> end for \end{env} a macro with the name \end<env>. Wolfgang

Am 03.04.10 16:16, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

...

...

...

name space to avoid macro collision

Possible with internal commands but you can run into problems with the user commands, a problem is also how LaTeX handle environments For \begin{env} LaTeX expects a macro with the name \<env> end for \end{env} a macro with the name \end<env>.

Lua can be more effective than TeX here ?

Lua can't do anything with conflicts at the user level. For a LaTeX module you can do something like \begin{env} -> \??lm:begin:env \end{env} -> \??lm:end:env

...

...

encoding are gone

Most input encodings are supported in mkiv, only a few (e.g. cyr and mac) are gone.

I care only unicode utf-8

This wasn't the question ;) Wolfgang

@Taco

I think the current latex module does

\def\begin#1{\csname start#1\endcsname} \def\end#1{\csname stop#1\endcsname}

but that all depends on how much latex compatibility is really needed. Only for latex/base/*

@Wolfgang

...

...

Most input encodings are supported in mkiv, only a few (e.g. cyr and mac) are gone. I care only unicode utf-8 This wasn't the question ;) ??

-- luigi

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 5:04 PM, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

You said encodings are gone in mkiv but this isn't true,

id est ? -- luigi

On 3-4-2010 6:44, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

Am 03.04.10 17:11, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

...

You said encodings are gone in mkiv but this isn't true, id est ? \enableregime[latin1] \starttext AOUÄÖÜ \stoptext

When encodins are really gone this should fail with mkiv but what you get as output is 'AOUÄÖU' what means encodings aren't gone. It's recommended to use UTF-8 encoded input but there is nothing which prevents you from using another one.

indeed and there is no reason to drop backward compatibility in that respect of course font (and math) encodings are completely gone 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

On 3-4-2010 7:09, luigi scarso wrote:

...

...

but there is nothing which prevents you from using another one. or invent one by myself too --why not ?

ah .. woul dhav emade a nice april 1 joke ... you announcing that there would finally be a proper input as well as font encoding for italian! 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

me neither. Should I ? :) -a- On Apr 3, 2010, at 7:19 PM, luigi scarso wrote:

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

ah .. woul dhav emade a nice april 1 joke ... you announcing that there would finally be a proper input as well as font encoding for italian! Uh? who needs them ? never had a problem with italian & context

-- luigi ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 : http://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 --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderaalle/ --> http://www.youtube.com/user/vanderaalle --> andrea.valle@unito.it -------------------------------------------------- " This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous." (Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski)

2010/4/3 Hans Hagen :

ah .. woul dhav emade a nice april 1 joke ... you announcing that there would finally be a proper input as well as font encoding for italian!

After that can we have ascii please? Best Martin

2010/4/3 Taco Hoekwater :

ebcdic!

UTF-EBCDIC? UTF-5? Best Martin

On 3-4-2010 3:42, luigi scarso wrote:

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

...

Am 03.04.10 15:01, schrieb luigi scarso:

...

...

2. What do you expect from a LuaLaTeX module?

\usemodule[latex] and then all things in latex/base/* work ok (and only these ones).

And what's with the Lua part you want? encoding font management name space to avoid macro collision

well, latex and context differ fundamentally and i'm not going to waste time on making things that can be shared (the font stuff is an exception and i only do the plain part; there might be more plain modules eventually); just look at the mp to pdf code ... you don't want to know what i had to do over time to keep it running in all macro packages and, as said the approach, interfaces, integratin of latex is so different that it makes no sense either; of course if i'm paid well i can consider making generic derivates but that's unlikely to happen my energy goes in context. (period) 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Am 03.04.10 11:47, schrieb Vedran Miletić:

...

...

Or write a LaTeX module for Context. :- http://modules.contextgarden.net/LaTeX

Wow!

Any documentation on what it supports?

http://dl.contextgarden.net/modules/t-latex/tex/context/third/latex/latextes... Wolfgang

Yes, that's indeed good to know. My MAIN problem with mkiv is that I can't get interaction bars working. I posted two basic setups a while ago, and while they work fine in mkii, they fail in mkiv. Never got a response ... Matthias On Apr 2, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 2-4-2010 14:20, John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

well, i use mkiv exclusively so that might be a sign that it's not that bad; the main issue is to keep mkiv and luatex in sync

Good to know :)

I would much prefer mkiv as well, as luatex seems much easier to grok than TeX. I have the luck to be entering typographical programming at a new stage. To what degree can luatex be relied on to accomplish all that TeX macros can? Does certain functionality still require TeX code?

the same and more, it's still tex but we can now extend using lua so we can go beyond what normal tex can do

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!

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

On Thursday 01 April 2010 19:43:51 Hans Hagen wrote:

On 1-4-2010 19:40, Sebastien Mengin wrote:

...

Do you plan to work on a French version as a basis and translate it afterward?

that's indeed a problem. as there is some european funding involved as well as from somefrench academy it has to be in french but once the content is there arthur will also do the translation (i still remember eurotex in brest ... all in french because of some rules)

Hans

That was the early effects of some un-enforceable law carrying the name of Mr. "All-good" (law Toubon). I recently organized an international summer school in Corsica (nice place to hold a summer school) and indeed was contacted by some obscure association with the aim of defending the French language. You see, our website was in English (remember, *international* summer school) and we were "reported" by one of their members. (They had no shame to say so... kind of reminds one not the very best episodes of recent French history.) So I looked into the law and followed it to the letter: I offered to the one French national teacher (out of 12) the possibility to give his course in French. Of course he would not think of it. And I made sure that we had a translation device on hand (a dictionary). So I suggest that Arthur write the book in French and maybe I could translate it into Dutch. Alan