Okay Taco, so that's a possibility I can explore, even though it is not a nice one, as you say. I can think of a couple of other not-so-nice ways of achieving a result as well. The manuscript shown me (in MSWord, obviously) has been carefully prepared to ensure no text flows over a page, so we are really dealing with separate pages. But of course, all that changes once page dimensions and font size etc. get involved at the ConTeXt stage. However, you gave me a clue: 3 files: "by creating two separate pdfs for the page bodies only and using a third context doc to include those pages alternated'. For the first chapter of the proposed book I have tried Wolfgang's suggestion as listed in https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Columns#Streams by simply using the \input method. Obviously 'en' and 'vn' stand for two tex files set up as I normally would with preamble and bodymatter. I certainly get a good result once the chapter starts. It would seem logical that further chapters can be added. Obviously I only want one TOC, not two (only call it in for, say, the en.tex but not for vn.tex) and for some reason I have several blank pages before everything starts... but hopefully can solve that. Maybe I can adapt what we have below with the project structure. Not ready to give up yet! Julian \starttext \startoutputstream[one] \startcolor[red] \input en\par \stopcolor \stopoutputstream \startoutputstream[two] \startcolor[blue] \input vn\par \stopcolor \stopoutputstream \synchronizestreams[one,two] \setbox\scratchboxone\outputstreambox[one] \setbox\scratchboxtwo\outputstreambox[two] \doloop {\ifvoid\scratchboxone \exitloop \else \setbox\scratchboxfour\vsplit\scratchboxone to \textheight \vbox to \vsize{\box\scratchboxfour\vss}% \setbox\scratchboxfive\vsplit\scratchboxtwo to \textheight \vbox to \vsize{\box\scratchboxfive\vss}% \fi} \stoptext On 3/4/23 20:15, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

Way, way back when, I did a document in NL + EN by creating two separate pdfs for the page bodies only and using a third context doc to included those pages alternated, with the correct headers added in that third document. Not a ’nice’ solution at all, but it worked for me. (this was in the nineties, though)

Thanks Peter. I took a look at your lua pages. I think I would get entirely lost with that code at this stage, and of course I am not considering (at least not for now) a two-column approach, but facing pages. But at least you achieved what you were trying to do at the time. Hopefully I will also! Julian On 3/4/23 20:55, Peter Münster via ntg-context wrote:

On Mon, Apr 03 2023, jbf via ntg-context wrote:

...

Q 1: Has anybody reading this actually produced a bilingual book (it doesn't have to be en-vn) with ConTeXt? Hi,

Only some pages of a book: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Catalogue_raisonné

HTH,

Yes, that is clear from the emails over a decade or so on the list. But as you will see from my response to Taco, it is possible I can achieve a satisfactory result from Wolfgang's 2016 'stream' suggestion. Julian On 3/4/23 22:04, Henning Hraban Ramm via ntg-context wrote:

This is one these problems that arise once every other year, but so far nobody contributed a usable solution or at least specification. (That’s how I understood Hans when I asked about this fo my book.)