Thanks, Wolfgang. Now it's all good. Typescripts are a little opaque to me. I need to learn a lot more, to be sure. I want to thank the ConTeXt team for the great work on the product and the docs. I do respect that TeX has a culture and one cannot design a product that is alien to that. I have some thoughts where a few spots in the docs could be friendlier for someone coming from a standpoint of general design and typography. Sort of like "here's how you think with DTP" and "here's how it's done in ConTeXt." I might also suggest a couple of features; I was, however, able to Google for much that I needed (e.g., with character spacing). Yet I'm not one to just butt into people's workflow, given their time and investment. In general I find ConTeXt to be superior in many regards for my needs. Unfortunately, I am not a scientist. I have a bachelor's degree in computer science with a minor in Germanistik, and I have two master's degrees in theology, having studied in Germany and the US. So I want to edit books that celebrate the history of thought and typography. ConTeXt is the best positioned to make beautiful, modern books, surpassing many generally available commercial products. Here's an interesting point: InDesign creates ligatures, but irrespective of what is going on in the actual font. So, unless you use Unicode Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, or whatever, the older style fonts that still inhabit the commercial multilingual industry get mangled. TeX and friends are smart and don't do that. They can handle some complicated typography more robustly than many others. InDesign and InCopy use a version control system where one can "check out," "check in," and track changes in a parallel workflow. Grep searching has also been integrated. It seems to me that if something like Scribus had a means to interlink with ConTeXt, cvs / svn or the like, and had a means of automatically generating code and previews, you would have a typesetting system that could compete feature for feature with InDesign and InCopy, and surpass it in some cases. Charles
Charles P. Schaum wrote:
Here's an interesting point: InDesign creates ligatures, but irrespective of what is going on in the actual font. So, unless you use Unicode Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, or whatever, the older style fonts that still inhabit the commercial multilingual industry get mangled. TeX and friends are smart and don't do that. They can handle some complicated typography more robustly than many others.
i'm currently reading a books with is typeset quite ok (in optima) but occasionally uses smallcaps with intercharacter spacing which looks ok apart form the occasional ligature and indeed fi a b c d liiks kin dof strange; it always puzzles me why professional dtp programs don't deal with it anyhow, in context mkiv (luatex version) we will have way more control than we have now
InDesign and InCopy use a version control system where one can "check out," "check in," and track changes in a parallel workflow. Grep
how do they deal with non compatible new features; for instance, at bachotek i learned that some otf features that are not supported in older versions are supported in new ones (or are supported differently); is there some compatibility mode (i.e. is the old behavior still present and the ID/IC version number stored in the document?)
searching has also been integrated. It seems to me that if something like Scribus had a means to interlink with ConTeXt, cvs / svn or the like, and had a means of automatically generating code and previews, you would have a typesetting system that could compete feature for feature with InDesign and InCopy, and surpass it in some cases.
well, that's the idea -) 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------
participants (2)
-
Charles P. Schaum -
Hans Hagen