Oh, I WISH I had Framemaker... But this might be interesting. Setting up margin notes in InDesign is considered to be an "Intermediate to advanced feature." It may well be possible to have more recurrent structured elements in Framemaker, but I would suggest that only TeX and friends can do something like structured recurrent text elements that might vary according to anything more than a trivial algorithm. I dunno. \inmargin seemed pretty simple to me... I think that my designer may be jealous. ;-) On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 10:53 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

Dear gang,

There has been some discussion on the list lately comparing ConTeXt with InDesign. Are there any Framemaker users on the list? I'm interested in comparisons between ConTeXt and Framemaker, with cross-comparisons with InDesign as appropriate.

What does ConTeXt have that Framemaker does not?

What does Framemaker have that ConTeXt does not? (svg integration comes to mind -- there's been some svg discussion here the last couple of days).

From what I know of Framemaker -- structured processing etc, it seems that would be a more a~propos comparison with ConTeXt than InDesign.

Eventually I would like to establish a wiki page with detailed and accurate comparisons between ConTeXt, InDesign, Framemaker, and perhaps other DTP applications as well. I even plan to get my hands on the "competition" so I can get more 1st hands knowledge for my own edification.

Best wishes Idris

Hi Martin, On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:18:37 -0600, Martin Schröder wrote:

2008/6/30 Idris Samawi Hamid :

...

What does ConTeXt have that Framemaker does not?

I don't know about ConTeXt, but I know that something like LaTeX's \include/\includeonly was a new feature of Frame 7 (from 2002).

What is \include/\includeonly? [Since switching to Context six years ago-- wow, has it really been that long? -- I have not looked back] Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid, Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Shi`i Studies Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

Aditya Mahajan wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

...

Hi Martin,

On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:18:37 -0600, Martin Schröder wrote:

...

2008/6/30 Idris Samawi Hamid :

...

What does ConTeXt have that Framemaker does not?

I don't know about ConTeXt, but I know that something like LaTeX's \include/\includeonly was a new feature of Frame 7 (from 2002).

What is \include/\includeonly?

Suppose you are writing a book with 15 chapters, and it takes a long time to compile your chapters. In LaTeX, you can include each chapter using \include {name of file} and then add a command \includeonly{a few chapters} on the top of your file. Only the chapters specified by \includeonly are included. So, it saves a lot of time in compiling the file. (I think there is also a command to exclude specific chapters).

It is roughly similar to compiling only a component of a big project in ConTeXt. However, I feel that the latex version works better since it maintains the numbering of chapters, etc.

For example, in latex if I include chapter 3 of a big book, its chapter number will be 3, and all the cross references to material outside that chapter will be correct.

In Context, if I compile the component containing chapter 3, its number will start from 1. I can get correct cross references by using \usereferences (and ignore the duplicate references warning), but the numbering of the compiled component is incorrect. This is one are where I wish context had better support.

Note that latex's method is not perfect. \include starts a new page, but that way it can ensure that the materical of included file is somewhat isolated with rest of the material. Context's \component does not start a new page, which is often times useful.

for that purpose there has always been \setuphead[chapter][incrementnumber=somefilename] % whole doc file (just as there are parallel documents and such) but i haven't used it in 10 years; maybe i pick up this feature for mkiv 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 Tue, 1 Jul 2008, Hans Hagen wrote:

for that purpose there has always been

\setuphead[chapter][incrementnumber=somefilename] % whole doc file

(just as there are parallel documents and such)

I cannot get this feature to work. See the attached sample files. I have a product file, prod.tex, two components, chap1.tex, chap2.tex and an evironment file containing \setuphead[chapter][incrementnumber=prod]. I first compile the whole product, then I compile chap2, but the chapter number is 1. Aditya