Le 11 mars à 13:00:51 "Thomas A. Schmitz" écrit notamment: | On Mar 10, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Jean Magnan de Bornier wrote:

| > Using the last mkiv from the minimals, \setuppublications seems out | > of order. | > | > If I write: | > .................................. | > \setupbibtex [database=/home/jean/biblio] | > \setuppublications[alternative=apa] | > | > \starttext | > | > | > {\bf Bibliography} | > | > \nocite[foo, bla, blu] | > \placepublications | > \stoptext | > ................................... | > | > the pub list is empty. But if comment out this line the bibliography | > is | > printed; it works also ok with | > | > \setuppublications[] | >

| Difficult to answer, I don't have the file /home/jean/biblio. Maybe | make a real example? Fair enough. Here: ......................... \setupbibtex [database=/home/jean/biblio] \setuppublications[alternative=apa] \starttext {\bf Bibliography} \nocite[hh2010a,hh2010b,Eijkhout1991] \placepublications \stoptext ............................ biblio.bib is a file already known to some: ............................ @STRING{hh = {Hans Hagen}} @ELECTRONIC{hh2010, author = hh, year = {2010}, title = {Metafun. \CONTEXT\ mkiv}, url = {http://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/metafun-s.pdf}, } @ARTICLE{hh2010a, author = hh, title = {The Font Name Mess}, journal = {MAPS}, year = {2010}, volume = {40}, pages = {2-8}, keywords = {context}, } @ARTICLE{hh2010b, author = hh, title = {Grouping in Hybrid Environments}, journal = {MAPS}, year = {2010}, volume = {40}, pages = {67-71}, keywords = {context}, } @BOOK{Eijkhout1991, title = {\TeX\ by Topic. A \TeX nician's Reference}, publisher = {Addison-Wesley}, year = {1991}, author = {Victor Eijkhout}, address = {London}, keywords = {general}, } ........................... With mkiv I get an output without the bibliography; but dropping "alternative=apa" everything is fine (I tried other alternatives). tia, -- Jean

Le 12 mars à 11:09:55 "Thomas Schmitz" écrit notamment: | On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 08:37:28 +0100 | Jean Magnan de Bornier wrote:

| >Fair enough. Here: | > ......................... | > \setupbibtex [database=/home/jean/biblio] | > \setuppublications[alternative=apa] | > | > \starttext | > | > | > {\bf Bibliography} | > | > \nocite[hh2010a,hh2010b,Eijkhout1991] | > \placepublications | > \stoptext | > ............................

| Have you tried \placepublications[criterium=all] or | \placepublications[criterium=text]? These are working, thanks. -- Jean

Hi Florian, On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:45:16 +0100 Florian Wobbe wrote:

...

Have you tried \placepublications[criterium=all] or \placepublications[criterium=text]?

Hi Thomas,

you gave me exactly the same hint last week.

Not only that, but someone gave exactly the same hint to Jean in December... We should

add criterium=cite and criterium=text to the Wiki (Bibliography MKIV page: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography_mkiv).

You are of course right, but I assume Hans is working on bibliographies right now (he promised to finish something which I need for a project in March, so that leaves him another two weeks ;-), so we should maybe wait a bit. criterium=cite should work as well, but doesn't right now.

In the beginning it was not clear to me, that http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography refers to the MKII implementation of Taco. Therefore, I would suggest to rename Bibliography to Bibliography_mkii and create an alias Bibliography that redirects to Bibliography_mkiv instead. In the wiki pages Bibliography_mkiv and Bibliography_mkii the first sentence should state that the page is related to mkii/mkiv only and link to the other page. Do you think this is reasonable?

I had begun rewriting the page. There is now http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliographies which links to the other pages, and which is linked to on the front page. But another context-related project kept me away from this and I never finished this, so fell free to shuffle and rewrite things!

I would like to add a section on customising bibstyle files and add space for sharing reference styles of different journals. What do you think?

Again, that's a very good idea, but we should maybe wait just a bit till the dust settles a bit.

In general I find it difficult to differentiate between mkiv and mkii related information in the wiki. How could we better structure the wiki to make it easier for the reader? Disambiguation pages, mkiv/mkii sections, independent pages with mkiv/mkii in headerline?

Just my 2 cents on this: difficult, because you won't be able to make everybody happy. Every now and then, I see a new user on the list who asks about "installing mkiv" and doesn't realize that it is not really something which you have to install additionally. We shouldn't scare those users because in so many cases, mkii and mkiv are exactly identical, so that would be an arguments against a too stric separation. But of course you're also right that it's frustrating for users if they can't find relevant information for the areas where the two differ. As long as mkiv hasn't settled, this is not easy... All best Thomas

On 2011-03-12 Florian Wobbe wrote:

Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out:

1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii?

Because the old manuals only mention mkii and many things have changed in mkiv and don't work in mkii. It is not easy for beginners to choose between mkii and mkiv. And many are not aware of the two different (and incompatible) versions and mix them up.

2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals?

First: Users like to install software using the package management system. Installing software manually is considered evil. For software that is updated frequently usually ppa links are provided for the repository. Second: You mentioned it already. Users tend to install »maximals«, not minimals, they don't like rectricted versions if you can get the whole. ;)

3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers?

Make it clear that the minimals are the standard way of using ConTeXt, not TeXlive when they want an up-to-date ConTeXt distribution. A clear advise for mkiv and contra mkii. mkiv is the way to go in the future.

4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden for search engine requests?

I don't see a problem there (but still, maybe other people have). Searching the mailing list, the garden or google for context + pragma usually points to the right direction.

5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?

Provide examples using the described features, so they have a point to start from. This is solved in a good way in the pdf documents, not really on the wiki.

I understand the problem.

Having said that, pages like "Using Mark IV" or "Install Mark IV" should be renamed to "installing/using context".

ACK

Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. But I recall it was also the name "The ConTeXt MINIMAL distribution" that kept me. The name "minimal" somehow suggested something incomplete or minor to me. It took me a while to figure out that the minimals is actually more than you get from TexLive. Therefore, I would suggest leaving out "minimal" and advertise the superior instead.

Very true. But it's an established name, I don't believe that it's likely to be changed. Marco

Hello, my personal opinion(s) (some of them very similar to Marco's ones):

1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii?

(Cannot say; I started with MkIV so for me ConTeXt = MkIV.)

2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals?

The word "minimals" is a bit confusing. It implies that there must be also Ctx "standard" or Ctx "maximal". Better to be just "ConTeXt"; and if one finds something missing (e.g. fonts? modules?), he may be directed towards some "extras".

3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers? 4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden for search engine requests?

The problem is too-many-incomplete (or obsolete) information sources. Wiki contains many stubs; there are options for commands which are not explained at all, even not mentioned or demonstrated by an example. Similar for contextref.pdf - there are many "todo areas", but be it. But also many command options are not explained at all. From the user's point, when one has a problem, this means 1) search the wiki (he may remember that lately he didn't find an answer, but he should try again, what about if the topic/stub was added/completed?), 2) search the manual (personally, my most favourite source) and 3) to post a question to the mailing list (fortunately, people here do answer swiftly and even very "basic" questions are answered patiently). In my opinion, one information source would be good, a Ctx reference. It might be divided to several parts (e.g. Fonts, Tables, Document Structure Elements, Layers and Overlays, Colouring ConTeXt, ConTeXt and XML...). It should be decided whether the primary source is to be the wiki or the Ctx manual (.pdf).

5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?

For LaTeX incomers: it would be good to provide a sample setup (module?) which would make Ctx generated .pdf looking very closely to that been generated by LaTeX. Now, if you see a .pdf document and you are familiar with LaTeX, you recognize immediately whether or not it was generated by LaTeX (Word's signature is also unmatchable). If you create a first document with ConTeXt (moreover when migrating from LaTeX), you probably won't be satisfied with the default look (letters too big, heads not bold, spacing before/after heads too different from LaTeX's; and the LaTeX default document looks very "symphonic" in my opinion) (but also I can imagine that many Ctx defaults cannot be changed due to backward compatibility reasons). The perfect feature of ConTeXt is that all these features may be systematically altered (often [almost] impossible in LaTeX) but you must search enough and study (and maybe ask the forum) to get the result which would fulfil your aesthetic requirements. ---- Treat all above as a personal point of view. I appreciate all work around Ctx and documenting it; and as an active programmer (including writing a user reference) I can imagine effort which must be make to improve a program, to test it and to keep the documentation up-to-date, including adding description of new features (and samples for them) and removing the deprecated ones. Best regards, Lukas

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Florian Wobbe [mailto:Florian.Wobbe@awi.de] Gesendet: Samstag, 12. März 2011 13:21 An: mailing list for ConTeXt users Betreff: [NTG-context] Ideas for restructuring the ConTeXt garden?

Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out:

1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? 3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers? 4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden for search engine requests? 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?

Especially answers from new users to the first three points would be helpful to answer the fifth point I guess.

...

...

In general I find it difficult to differentiate between mkiv and mkii related information in the wiki. How could we better structure the wiki to make it easier for the reader? Disambiguation pages, mkiv/mkii sections, independent pages with mkiv/mkii in headerline? Just my 2 cents on this: difficult, because you won't be able to make everybody happy. Every now and then, I see a new user on the list who asks about "installing mkiv" and doesn't realize that it is not really something which you have to install additionally. We shouldn't scare those users because in so many cases, mkii and mkiv are exactly identical, so that would be an arguments against a too stric separation.

I understand the problem.

Having said that, pages like "Using Mark IV" or "Install Mark IV" should be renamed to "installing/using context".

Maybe it would help to include a little box "important things to know" on

installation page and explain shortly that for historical reasons mkii and mkiv are distributed together and that the former is regarded deprecated. Maybe link to a new page: Differences between miiv/mkii and how both are invoked (context vs. texexec).

Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort. But I recall it was also the name "The ConTeXt MINIMAL distribution" that kept me. The name "minimal" somehow suggested something incomplete or minor to me. It took me a while to figure out that the minimals is actually more than you get from TexLive. Therefore, I would suggest leaving out "minimal" and advertise the superior instead.

...

But of course you're also right that it's frustrating for users if they can't find relevant information for the areas where the two differ. As long as mkiv hasn't settled, this is not easy...

In deed. I guess this has most relevance for people new to context, especially those who know latex already and are used to find help easily.

...

...

We should add criterium=cite and criterium=text to the Wiki (Bibliography MKIV page: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography_mkiv).

You are of course right, but I assume Hans is working on bibliographies right now (he promised to finish something which I need for a project in March, so that leaves him another two weeks ;-), so we should maybe wait a bit.

OK, fine. I'm curious what new feature this will bring to us!

...

criterium=cite should work as well, but doesn't right now.

...

In the beginning it was not clear to me, that http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliography refers to the MKII implementation of Taco. Therefore, I would suggest to rename Bibliography to Bibliography_mkii and create an alias Bibliography that redirects to Bibliography_mkiv instead. In the wiki pages Bibliography_mkiv and Bibliography_mkii the first sentence should state that the page is related to mkii/mkiv only and link to the other page. Do you think this is reasonable?

I had begun rewriting the page. There is now http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Bibliographies which links to the other

and which is linked to on the front page. But another context-related

kept me away from this and I never finished this, so fell free to shuffle and rewrite things!

I see. I was not aware of this page. I usually find information on the wiki by searching for: "site:wiki.contextgarden.net placepublications". So if

actually disambiguation pages for mkiv/mkii it makes sense to include mkiv/mkii on both pages (not just one).

...

...

I would like to add a section on customising bibstyle files and add space for sharing reference styles of different journals. What do you think?

Again, that's a very good idea, but we should maybe wait just a bit till

Hello, I recently started using context. I migrated from latex to xelatex to context. Mainly because of the better font support. I now value context also for its superior abilities. I feel that I can do more stuff without the use of \usepackage for this, \usepackage for that. When I read the documentation, I get the feeling that a lot of thoughts went into the options that are presented but it's still easy to customize (if you know how to do it :D) Here is my input to your questions. 1) why users are confused with mkiv/mkii? The difference is not well explained. Also, mkii (which I don't use) sounds like "the old version". When I first read about context, it was like "well, we have this and that (mkii and mkiv)" but it should say "we have mkii, [insert here: what can it do, for what users is it recommended, pros/cons] and mkiv [insert info]. If you are not sure what to use, then you should use mkiv, because that is the future." Or something like that. 2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? Because they already have it in miktex, texlive. What they don't know is that these versions are outdated and due to the heavy development pretty far behind. Plus, it should say "Context Standalone" because that is what it is. 3) how to restructure the garden to make things clearer for newcomers? I for one would welcome to see more guides like the "titles" guide. Nicely commented and explained code, result as picture. For better structure it would be an option to use code blocks that can be hidden, with a small [+] in front that you can click to see the code. 4) how do users look for information and how to optimise the garden for search engine requests? I read the manual section, if that does not answer it, I google "<what I want> context". Most of the time that takes me to the mail archive. 5) how to better promote context to new/latex users? I don't know. Maybe that helps. Christian the pages, project there are the

dust settles a bit.

All right.

Best, Florian

Hi, On 03/13/2011 12:04 AM, Pontus Lurcock wrote:

On Sat 12 Mar 2011, C. wrote:

...

2) why they my be reluctant to install the minimals? Because they already have it in miktex, texlive. What they don't know is that these versions are outdated and due to the heavy development pretty far behind. Plus, it should say "Context Standalone" because that is what it is.

I think "Context Standalone" would be a good name: as I understand it, "minimals" refers to the fact that it doesn't include other TeX formats and associated baggage; "standalone" conveys the same idea with less ambiguity, and hints at the fact that it won't interfere with your system's package manager.

I agree, that sounds like a good name. Mojca, this does not need much more initial work than fixing the wiki pages, right? Best wishes, Taco

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 15:26, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

Except that wiki pages are in a really horrible shape when it comes to Installation pages. [...] If anyone has the slightest idea where to start, please do it.

FWIW, I updated the Ubuntu pages last week. The OS X pages don't seem to be out of date. mathew

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 06:21, Florian Wobbe wrote:

Then I am aware of many people who are reluctant to install the minimals. I now wonder why I (myself) was unwilling to install the minimals in the first place, having TeXLive installed already. For one it was because of the extra effort.

My experience on Ubuntu is that if you install the ConTeXt minimals in your path, they break a bunch of stuff from TeXLive, such as pdfcrop. I ended up writing my own pdfcrop because I couldn't work out how to get the one from my distribution working at the same time as the ConTeXt minimals. I'd have gone back to my distro's copy of ConTeXt, if it wasn't for the fact that it dates back to 2009 and I'd already hit a bug in it that's fixed in the minimals. mathew -- URL:http://www.pobox.com/~meta/

On Sat 12 Mar 2011, mathew wrote:

...

My experience on Ubuntu is that if you install the ConTeXt minimals in your path, they break a bunch of stuff from TeXLive, such as pdfcrop.

I have the minimals installed but with no automatic setup in .bashrc or similar. So when I need to run ConTeXt, I fire up a new terminal and explicitly ‘source /path/to/minimals/context/tex/setuptex’ before doing anything else. Anything I run in a different terminal just gets the standard paths for the system's TeXLive installation.

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 6:03 AM, Pontus Lurcock wrote: this is the right way to work with minimals (in linux is easy than windows). -- luigi

On 03/13/2011 08:42 AM, Alan BRASLAU wrote:

On Sunday 13 March 2011 07:25:03 luigi scarso wrote:

...

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 6:03 AM, Pontus Lurcock wrote:

...

On Sat 12 Mar 2011, mathew wrote:

...

My experience on Ubuntu is that if you install the ConTeXt minimals in your path, they break a bunch of stuff from TeXLive, such as pdfcrop.

I have the minimals installed but with no automatic setup in .bashrc or similar. So when I need to run ConTeXt, I fire up a new terminal and explicitly ‘source /path/to/minimals/context/tex/setuptex’ before doing anything else. Anything I run in a different terminal just gets the standard paths for the system's TeXLive installation.

this is the right way to work with minimals (in linux is easy than windows).

Except if one works principly with ConTeXt, in which case it is much nicer to have /path/to/minimials by default in PATH.

I do the opposite: if ever I need to use latex (lualatex!),

If I need lualatex, I just push the TeXLive bin directory to the front of my path. (exact opposite of Pontus' approach). Best wishes, Taco

Am 2011-03-13 um 06:03 schrieb Pontus Lurcock:

I have the minimals installed but with no automatic setup in .bashrc or similar. So when I need to run ConTeXt, I fire up a new terminal and explicitly ‘source /path/to/minimals/context/tex/setuptex’ before doing anything else. Anything I run in a different terminal just gets the standard paths for the system's TeXLive installation.

I do the same on OSX (even if simply because setuptex is too slow for every new Terminal window, where I don’t need it) but set alias setuptex='. /path/to/tex/setuptex /path/to/tex' in my .bashrc (or .profile, that is). Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe

Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out:

5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?

I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too).

2011/3/14 Carlos Breton Besnier

2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe

...

Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out:

5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?

I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I am no-developer, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too).

Well, with TeX Live 2010 it's very simple to use MkII with both pdfTeX and XeTeX. Hopefully, some future version of TeX Live (2011?) will offer the same for MkIV. Script is already there, it's just not integrated with TeXworks in TeX Live yet. Regards, Vedran Miletić

2011/3/12 Florian Wobbe

Maybe we should start a discussion in a new thread to find out:

5) how to better promote context to new/latex users?

I think is needed a installation guide for non-technical. A guide not only for programmers but a simple guide for dummies. Like me, I am no-developer, I write law books. Latex installation and update is very simple for beginners. On Windows with MiKTeX, everyone can write very soon his first document. Not so with ConTeXt, except old stand-alone installation. It's cause of frustration and after several attempts they give up. Then they return to LaTeX (like me too).