On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, Maurice Diamantini wrote:

Le 12 avr. 07 à 07:37, Thomas A. Schmitz a écrit :

...

...

... There are fast approaching competitors that will eventually overtake LaTeX if we continue to stagnate. (Not to mention ConTeXt, which has surpassed LaTeX in essentially every area. Maybe the solution is just for everyone to switch to that.)

Except for reference documentation or book (no need for a "s" here!).

While starting ConTeXt, I found ConTeXt an excrusion and ConTeXt manual to be extremely well written, much better than what I had read for LaTeX (but then, I never bought a LaTeX book). What do you find missing in the ConTeXt documentation that a book should cover? I know that there are certain places where the documentation is a bit old and outdated, but given the pace at which ConTeXt is developed, that will happen with any reference book. Aditya

Jelle Huisman schrieb:

Op 13-apr-2007, om 9:20 heeft Aditya Mahajan het volgende geschreven:

...

While starting ConTeXt, I found ConTeXt an excrusion and ConTeXt manual to be extremely well written, much better than what I had read for LaTeX (but then, I never bought a LaTeX book). What do you find missing in the ConTeXt documentation that a book should cover?

In Epen we discussed 'the book' and a 'ConTeXt cookbook'. I think that this discussion shows that it would be good for the ConTeXt community to have a book published by a publisher (like AW), but someone (or a small committee) has to coordinate it.

I agree! The documentation situation of ConTeXt is rather messy. Some stuff on the wiki, many, many PDFs with cryptic names and some years old. LaTeX since ages has "lshort" as the quick standard intro (and of course numerous others) and then the mighty 1100+ pages tome Mittelbach et al. "The LaTeX Companion" where most things can be found that even the anvanced user might need (recently it appeared in a second edition, thus probably securing LaTeXs leading position for another decade...). http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201362996 Now, if we had "The ConTeXt Companion" ;-) Cheers Ulf

Patrick Gundlach schrieb:

...

Now, if we had "The ConTeXt Companion" ...

... ConTeXt would probably stabilize, which IMHO is not a good thing. One thing I really love ConTeXt for is the speed new techniques are adopted (pdf features, luatex,...) One day we might have a ConTeXt MKII book for those who are afraid of swithing to pdftex2.

I don't think that The ConTeXt Companion (TCC) would halt ConTeXt development. The LaTeX Companion (TLC) didn't do that for LaTeX. Now, TLC was in 1st edition from 1994 to 2004, meaning that it was quite outdated in the end (one reason for me, btw, to look around wether there are other options to do teXing, and discovering ConTeXt). But it kept the reference situation in a well defined three step state: (1) look into one of the small LaTeX guides; (2) look into TLC; (3) look into package docs, internet etc. (which is, of course messy). My experience is that one rarely needed to go past (2). With ConTeXt there is, of course, the "excursion" (equiv. to (1)) and the manual (2), but many important issues (the phantastic XML processing capabilities, bibliography stuff, typography, font management,...) are not quite complete or covered elsewhere (i.e. situation 3). Ulf

Ulf Martin wrote:

With ConTeXt there is, of course, the "excursion" (equiv. to (1)) and the manual (2), but many important issues (the phantastic XML processing capabilities, bibliography stuff, typography, font management,...) are not quite complete or covered elsewhere (i.e. situation 3).

concerning xml ... i will update that manual once we have mkiv in place; currently xml processing has some dark corners when tex and xml are used mixed but this will go away; i also have some experimental xml manipulation code laying around (filtering, replacing, etc). In this respect mkiv will be quite powerfull for xml 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 Wed, 18 Apr 2007, Horacio Suarez wrote:

Is there a way to obtain a mirrored pdf?

Mirrored in what way? (I use Acrobat when necessary, but I'm not familiar with the plug-ins, which is why I have to ask...) Do you mean mirror margins, i.e. inside and outside margins instead of left and right? For double-sided printing? Are you doing your pdf from ConTeXt source or do you just want to rearrange an existing pdf for mirror margin layout? Mirror margins can be done in ConTeXt code. This wiki page gives the first hint on margins: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Layout Note that you always layout the 'odd' page, i.e the right-hand page and then define a double-sided layout (nb. even though the command \showlayout will give you several pages of layout, it will *only* show the right-hand layout - look at the text itself to make sure you got the mirror margins right). I frankly don't know if my solution is the most elegant one, but this works for me: \setuplayout [footer=1cm, backspace=5.5cm, %inside margin width=12cm] %textwidth, leaves 3.5cm for outside margin on A4 \setuppagenumbering [alternative=doublesided, %this is where doublesided comes in location={header,margin}] %pagenumber location If you use the above page number location, the page number is placed just outside of outer margin in the header and you can see very easily if mirroring is in place. I'm not sure if rearranging existing pdf works A4->A4, but if you need to do a book layout or leaflet or something similar, "imposition" is the term you want and pdfarrange can be the answer, see http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Imposition for more information and tips. The other meaning for 'mirrored': Do you, for some reason, really want to mirror a page like a mirror would reflect it, i.e. text backwards etc? Like for printing on t-shirt transfer? I don't know if this can be done... I'd assume ConTeXt or texexec knows how to do it, I just haven't needed to find out (yet). :-) Hope this helps, Mari (who found out about mirrored margins with the trial-and-error method before the wiki existed...)

Horacio Suarez wrote:

Hello all:

Is there a way to obtain a mirrored pdf?

I don�t have a postscript printer. I been doing that in Acrobat using a plugin, but I�m trying to avoid Adobe Acrobat.

i�m using context 2007.02.21 11:55, running from SciTe, Ghostscript 8.56 and GSview 4.8 what do you mean with mirrored?

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

Horacio Suarez wrote:

I�ve made a mistake and replyed to Mari Voipio. Sorry, Mari.

I need to print in a laser printer mirrored. The page should as is viewed in a mirror. All the pages. Fliped horizontally. \setuppapersize[A4][A4,mirrored]

\starttext \dorecurse{10}{\input tufte \relax} \stoptext

Thankyou very much.

...

From: Hans Hagen Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users To: mailing list for ConTeXt users Subject: Re: [NTG-context] mirrored pages Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:24:35 +0200

Horacio Suarez wrote:

...

Hello all:

Is there a way to obtain a mirrored pdf?

I don�t have a postscript printer. I been doing that in Acrobat using a plugin, but I�m trying to avoid Adobe Acrobat.

i�m using context 2007.02.21 11:55, running from SciTe, Ghostscript 8.56 and GSview 4.8 what do you mean with mirrored?

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

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On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:58:11 -0600, Patrick Gundlach wrote:

... ConTeXt would probably stabilize, which IMHO is not a good thing. One thing I really love ConTeXt for is the speed new techniques are adopted (pdf features, luatex,...) One day we might have a ConTeXt MKII book for those who are afraid of swithing to pdftex2.

Hmm, we had this discussion in Epen... I think that enough of the high-level interface is stable enough that a thorough ConTeXt book will be useful, particularly after luaTeX/pdfTeX2. I recall a particular someone at Epen volunteering to set up a working committee on this, even to write the book himself if no one volunteers to help soon... :D :D :D As for MKII/pdfTeX1, it makes no sense making a book for a stalled branch; pdfTeX1 will go the way of the original TeX engine. Who today will write a book for those who only want to use the dvi format? Best Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

...

book for those who only want to use the dvi format?

hey, it's not that bad ... After all it's DeVice Independent. Maybe today it sounds better if we say 'output format independant'

Stable users that is. Joh (on unstable, which even has a packaged LuaTeX snapshot - thanks guys!) Martin Schröder wrote:

2007/4/14, Idris Samawi Hamid :

...

As for MKII/pdfTeX1, it makes no sense making a book for a stalled branch;

debian users will continue to use pdfTeX1 for at least 10 years, I fear. :-)

Best Martin

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