Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

John Haltiwanger

24 May 2009 24 May '09

11:17 a.m.

Hello, My name is John and I'm a nearly brand new TeX convert. All it took was one letter I wanted to look nice and now I know I will never craft an important document in another format again. Now, an obvious entry point is LaTeX, and indeed my first TeX document used this macro package. However, I couldn't help but stumble across the ConTeXt project in my investigation of the TeX landscape. The seemingly distinct separation of style from content, evidenced by the print versus the screen versions of some of the manuals, instantly endeared me. Within the same week, I found the comp.text.tex newsgroup. Lo and behold there was a quite active thread on LuaTeX, which I had just finished reading a presentation and a couple papers on the night before. On of the issues being discussed was the lack of a LaTeX document class for "thesis". This also involved discussion of LaTeX's shortcomings. I wrote into the thread that based on my (albeit completely theoretical) understanding, ConTeXt would be a wiser choice as a macro for any new department to begin requiring TeX documents. This was based on my vague understanding of the separation of environment from the content, as it were, and also on the multiple outputs available for the manuals. Since I see screen formatting as equally important, if not more, than paper formatting, it only made sense to me that the equivalent of a unversity specific documentclass in LaTeX would be a simple environment file in ConTeXt. This leads me to some questions I have about how great a fit for me ConTeXt actually is. 1) Can environment files be used across documents, or is it generally understood that every ConTeXt document requires its own environment formatting? (The latter is the view of someone on c.t.t, who said his perception of ConTeXt was that it was for typesetting individual documents and had less application beyond that domain.) 2) What is the state of XML output for ConTeXt files? I have to say I will find it hard to justify using TeX for documents if it means they are not translatable to XML easily. I'm also interested in any RDF support ConTeXt might have. I am just beginning my journey into TeX, and wish to learn the best macro package available. To me it seems like this is ConTeXt hands down, however the two questions above will indeed determine ConTeXt's actual utility in my case. Regards, John C. Haltiwanger P.S. For my first question, it seems easy to assume that if you can process XML files into standardized ConTeXt documents, the same would go for processing ConTeXt into standardized ConTeXt documents. But the question is too large not to ask.

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Henning Hraban Ramm

24 May 24 May

12:35 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Am 2009-05-24 um 19:17 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

...

1) Can environment files be used across documents, or is it generally understood that every ConTeXt document requires its own environment formatting? (The latter is the view of someone on c.t.t, who said his perception of ConTeXt was that it was for typesetting individual documents and had less application beyond that domain.)

Normally you use environment files for coherent projects (magazines, books) or sets of similar documents (letters, presentations). The difference in usage between a LaTeX document class and a ConTeXt environment is neglectable IMO. The real difference is that most LaTeX users just *use* some document class unchanged, because LaTeX doesn't encourage defining your own, while there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments available and most ConTeXt users want write their own anyway. For one-off documents I put everything in one file (and perhaps copy setup bits from other one-off files or environments). If *I* require a special layout for a single document, I normally use InDesign. The effort of "programming" a setup or an environment pays off only if you use it more often IMO.

...

2) What is the state of XML output for ConTeXt files? I have to say I will find it hard to justify using TeX for documents if it means they are not translatable to XML easily. I'm also interested in any RDF support ConTeXt might have.

XML is no target format for any TeX implementation. XML is a source format, and a good one if you want to process (typeset) it with ConTeXt (and perhaps make HTML from the same source). What do you mean with RDF? This one?: http://www.w3.org/RDF/ Or did you mean RTF? ConTeXt, like every flavour of TeX, is a "text compiler" to PDF (and DVI, if that's really important for you). Professional, printable, presentable output. No more, no less. Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

John Haltiwanger

25 May 25 May

10:30 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:

...

Am 2009-05-24 um 19:17 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

1) Can environment files be used across documents, or is it generally

...
understood that every ConTeXt document requires its own environment formatting? (The latter is the view of someone on c.t.t, who said his perception of ConTeXt was that it was for typesetting individual documents and had less application beyond that domain.)

Normally you use environment files for coherent projects (magazines, books) or sets of similar documents (letters, presentations).

The difference in usage between a LaTeX document class and a ConTeXt environment is neglectable IMO. The real difference is that most LaTeX users just *use* some document class unchanged, because LaTeX doesn't encourage defining your own, while there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments available and most ConTeXt users want write their own anyway.

For one-off documents I put everything in one file (and perhaps copy setup bits from other one-off files or environments).

If *I* require a special layout for a single document, I normally use InDesign. The effort of "programming" a setup or an environment pays off only if you use it more often IMO.

These paragraphs seems to contradict. ConTeXt is useful if you use an environment more than once, but there are no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments. I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX. 2) What is the state of XML output for ConTeXt files? I have to say I will

...

find it hard to justify using TeX for documents if it means they are not translatable to XML easily. I'm also interested in any RDF support ConTeXt might have.

XML is no target format for any TeX implementation.

...

XML is a source format, and a good one if you want to process (typeset) it with ConTeXt (and perhaps make HTML from the same source).

What do you mean with RDF? This one?: http://www.w3.org/RDF/ Or did you mean RTF?

Yes, I meant RDF. XML is a very important format. I find it odd that TeX can generate PDF but cannot output simple XML. So in order to have a semantical document I must write it in XML and then process it with ConTeXt? Is the capacity there (through LuaTeX perhaps) to write an XML generator? While I would expect the reasons for wanting XML output would be obvious, a concrete example is that at least one journal is deprecating LaTeX because it wants to archive all of its articles in XML. Regards, John C. Haltiwanger

Hans Hagen

10:39 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:

...
Am 2009-05-24 um 19:17 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

1) Can environment files be used across documents, or is it generally

...
understood that every ConTeXt document requires its own environment formatting? (The latter is the view of someone on c.t.t, who said his perception of ConTeXt was that it was for typesetting individual documents and had less application beyond that domain.)

Normally you use environment files for coherent projects (magazines, books) or sets of similar documents (letters, presentations).

The difference in usage between a LaTeX document class and a ConTeXt environment is neglectable IMO. The real difference is that most LaTeX users just *use* some document class unchanged, because LaTeX doesn't encourage defining your own, while there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments available and most ConTeXt users want write their own anyway.

For one-off documents I put everything in one file (and perhaps copy setup bits from other one-off files or environments).

If *I* require a special layout for a single document, I normally use InDesign. The effort of "programming" a setup or an environment pays off only if you use it more often IMO.

These paragraphs seems to contradict. ConTeXt is useful if you use an environment more than once, but there are no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments.

setting up a style for a paper takes a few commands: \setuplayout, \setuphead, \setupheadertexts ... and then structure in your document can do the rest; however, if we have styles of (say) 40 lines of code, users want a different font, diferen theaders etc and patch those 40 lines which then gives 80 lines most of which are redundant i've seen that happen a lot: copy an old style, then patch 50%, copy that file, patch again, and eventually one gets a big style that is 90% code that does more harm than good as context does need a style to start with, you can just start working and then every time you wonder if it should look different, you add a few lines to the preamble or style (more fun that way too)

...

I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

sure, but all organizations want it slightly different

...

2) What is the state of XML output for ConTeXt files? I have to say I will

...
find it hard to justify using TeX for documents if it means they are not translatable to XML easily. I'm also interested in any RDF support ConTeXt might have.

XML is no target format for any TeX implementation.

...
XML is a source format, and a good one if you want to process (typeset) it with ConTeXt (and perhaps make HTML from the same source).

What do you mean with RDF? This one?: http://www.w3.org/RDF/ Or did you mean RTF?

Yes, I meant RDF. XML is a very important format. I find it odd that TeX can generate PDF but cannot output simple XML. So in order to have a semantical document I must write it in XML and then process it with ConTeXt? Is the capacity there (through LuaTeX perhaps) to write an XML generator?

sure, but how useful is it to have a representation of (e.g.) a node list that makes up a paragraph in xml format? no app can do something with it maybe at some point the adobe and microsoft xml output formats become an option (which then involves resources like fonts and graphics as well so it's pretty bulky and one might wonder what gain there is)

...

While I would expect the reasons for wanting XML output would be obvious, a concrete example is that at least one journal is deprecating LaTeX because it wants to archive all of its articles in XML.

in which case it keeps the input in xml and converts to other formats (coule be tex in the case of rendering print) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

John Haltiwanger

10:53 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

...

I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments

...
are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

sure, but all organizations want it slightly different

Okay, but that does imply that an organization can set up an environment and expect its members to use it.

...

Yes, I meant RDF. XML is a very important format. I find it odd that TeX

...
can generate PDF but cannot output simple XML. So in order to have a semantical document I must write it in XML and then process it with ConTeXt? Is the capacity there (through LuaTeX perhaps) to write an XML generator?

sure, but how useful is it to have a representation of (e.g.) a node list that makes up a paragraph in xml format? no app can do something with it

I'm not sure what you mean by a representation of a node list for a paragraph (I am new to TeX, remember), but I am thinking more along the lines of extracting Title, Author, and the content. Typesetting is not the goal, as XML is for computers not people.

...

maybe at some point the adobe and microsoft xml output formats become an option (which then involves resources like fonts and graphics as well so it's pretty bulky and one might wonder what gain there is)

The gain of XML is participation in the semantic web and concordance with many new data keeping rules in governments and organizations. While I would expect the reasons for wanting XML output would be obvious, a

...

concrete example is that at least one journal is deprecating LaTeX because it wants to archive all of its articles in XML.

in which case it keeps the input in xml and converts to other formats (coule

...

be tex in the case of rendering print)

The input is actually a specific version of Word. This is converted to XML. In the case of LaTeX, the LaTeX is converted to Word and then to XML.

Hans Hagen

10:59 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

Okay, but that does imply that an organization can set up an environment and expect its members to use it.

indeed, of seek help in doing so (not much different from setting up a housestyle for word ro whatever)

...

I'm not sure what you mean by a representation of a node list for a paragraph (I am new to TeX, remember), but I am thinking more along the lines of extracting Title, Author, and the content. Typesetting is not the goal, as XML is for computers not people.

<glyph font='1' char='123'><kern width='1pt'><glyph font='1' char='456'> etc .. the result of typeseting (kind of application xml which actually much of the xml around is)

...

The gain of XML is participation in the semantic web and concordance with many new data keeping rules in governments and organizations.

that should happen with the source, ot the typeset result - structured document in xml format - rendering to the web using xslt and xhtml and css - rendering for paper using tex - analysing for whatever purpose using xml toolkits

...

The input is actually a specific version of Word. This is converted to XML. In the case of LaTeX, the LaTeX is converted to Word and then to XML.

i'd then go from latex directly to xml (given enough structure) but even workflows like word -> xml -> context are quite doable Hans ps most of our work here involves making styles and going from word/xml -> pdf (either or not reassembled) using context ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce D'Arcus

26 May 26 May

9:54 a.m.

New subject: [NTG-context] Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Hans Hagen writes: ...

...

in which case it keeps the input in xml and converts to other formats (coule be tex in the case of rendering print).

As Hans says, if you're interesting in integrating XML and RDF in source documents, you need to think of ConTeXt as a lower-level output format; not the other way around. Depending on your needs, I'd consider two options for the source format: XHTML + RDFa, and OpenDocument 1.2 (which will include RDF and RDFa support; likely to be implemented first in OpenOffice 3.2). DocBook is an option too, but does not AFAIK support RDFa. In any case, I'd worry less about the technology, and more about what you need from it. That will make it easier to figure out which approach is best. Bruce

John Haltiwanger

3:26 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

...

In any case, I'd worry less about the technology, and more about what you need from it. That will make it easier to figure out which approach is best.

Bruce

Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc. The desire for semantical documents sounds like it will be resolved sooner or later with Tagged PDF. Until then the semantics can reside outside the PDF in my case. I consider it only a "need" inasmuch as I am an archivist by archetype, and so the idea of the best looking documents (the PDFs) being also the most monolithic just goes against my natural grain. For now it is not an urgency, but I do thank you all for the advice and comments! The markdown solution is doubly good because now I see a way to incorporate conTeXt in a web project that centers on language The better rendered the text, the better the project. Ah, the universal adoption of TeX in everything I do may not be far off ;) Regards, John C. Haltiwanger

luigi scarso

4:08 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:26 PM, John Haltiwanger < john.haltiwanger@gmail.com> wrote:

...

...
In any case, I'd worry less about the technology, and more about what you need from it. That will make it easier to figure out which approach is best.

Bruce

Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc.

Just a reminder to me for a sprint in The Hague: I think that Markdown can be parsed by context mkiv with an ad hoc lpeg -- luigi

Bruce D'Arcus

5:07 p.m.

New subject: [NTG-context] Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

John Haltiwanger writes: [...]

...

Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc.

Actually, you can embed the RDFa within the markdown files if you like. <div property="x:section"> # Introduction Test. </div> Pandoc will just pass it on to the output XHTML (though throw it out for the context). But it's admittedly a little awkward to have to wrap the markdown with XHTML every time to want to add a triple. Bruce

John Haltiwanger

27 May 27 May

8:52 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:07 PM, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:

...

John Haltiwanger writes:

[...]

...
Markdown with RDFa on the side will suit quite nicely, thanks to pandoc.

Actually, you can embed the RDFa within the markdown files if you like.

<div property="x:section">

# Introduction

Test. </div>

Pandoc will just pass it on to the output XHTML (though throw it out for the context). But it's admittedly a little awkward to have to wrap the markdown with XHTML every time to want to add a triple.

Probably the biggest barrier for semanticality so far has been what a struggle it is to incorporate into a fluid workflow. For instance yes that is a pain to mix the markup and RDFa, but even more so if you are coding straight XHTML (though visually it would look a bit less awkward, XHTML is already so verbose that adding in the semanticality feels annoyingly burdensome.) If only markdown had some syntax for it, like |x:test # Introduction |x:section Test. || Wishful thinking. Cheers, John C. Haltiwanger

Wolfgang Schuster

25 May 25 May

10:50 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

...

I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's wrong with them? • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter Wolfgang

John Haltiwanger

11 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Wolfgang Schuster < schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:

...

Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments

...
are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's wrong with them?

• http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter

Wolfgang

Thank you for those! I had not come across them yet. I was responding to Henning's statement that "there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments available". In fact I realize I had misread that until right now, having missed the 'nearly' that qualifies the statement. Sorry for the confusion. Also, I don't want it to seem like I don't enjoy rolling my own documents. While I'm new at it, I quite like interfacing with documents in this 'programming' way. Thank you, John C. Haltiwanger

Mohamed Bana

11:12 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

my personal favourite http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context/44368/focus=46254, beware you might have trouble getting that to compile with a new version of LuaTeX. John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Wolfgang Schuster mailto:schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's wrong with them?

• http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter

Wolfgang

Thank you for those! I had not come across them yet. I was responding to Henning's statement that "there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments available". In fact I realize I had misread that until right now, having missed the 'nearly' that qualifies the statement. Sorry for the confusion.

Also, I don't want it to seem like I don't enjoy rolling my own documents. While I'm new at it, I quite like interfacing with documents in this 'programming' way.

Thank you, John C. Haltiwanger

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

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

Hans Hagen

11:24 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Wolfgang Schuster < schuster.wolfgang@googlemail.com> wrote:

...
Am 25.05.2009 um 18:30 schrieb John Haltiwanger:

I am not averse to rolling my own, I am just confused why, if environments

...
are so powerful and flexible (flexible meaning one can easily change things, unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available.. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a nice letter environment to demonstrate the beauty of TeX.

There are a lot of letter styles are available for ConTeXt, what's wrong with them?

• http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter_style • http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Letter

Wolfgang

Thank you for those! I had not come across them yet. I was responding to Henning's statement that "there are nearly no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments available". In fact I realize I had misread that until right now, having missed the 'nearly' that qualifies the statement. Sorry for the confusion.

Also, I don't want it to seem like I don't enjoy rolling my own documents. While I'm new at it, I quite like interfacing with documents in this 'programming' way.

in tex/context/[base|third], take a look at: m-* : specialized modules s-* : styles x-* : xml relatex modules t-* : third party modules 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

John Haltiwanger

11:51 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Thank you Arthur, Mohamed, and Hans for pointing me towards the available modules. As far as working towards semantical documents in TeX, I'll just have to settle for writing external RDF descriptors for the documents. I'll take a look at using XML as the source and feeding it into ConTeXt, but since I rather like conTeXt's markup over XML, I'm not sure how likely I will be to go that route. Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be feasible, Thanks everyone for being so helpful, speaks volumes about the community you have here. Regards, John C. Haltiwanger

Arthur Reutenauer

noon

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

...

Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be feasible,

Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012, but the backend features may be available sooner. Many people are looking forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-) See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap. Arthur

John Haltiwanger

12:09 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Arthur Reutenauer < arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:

...

...
Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be feasible,

Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012, but the backend features may be available sooner. Many people are looking forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-) See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.

Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer in the comments of this blog entry http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html Hopefully there can be found a way to incorporate these facilities in ConTeXt and/or LuaTeX when they emerge.

Arthur Reutenauer

12:21 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

...

Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer in the comments of this blog entry http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html

If you mean Leonard Rosenthol's comment at http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html?sho... the general issue is Tagged PDF. It's not really supported yet in any variant of TeX, but there is an active group working on it at River Valley Technologies (http://lists.river-valley.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tex). I haven't been following closely, but there's definitely progress. Arthur

John Haltiwanger

12:24 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Yes, that is the comment. Thank you for the heads up :) On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Arthur Reutenauer < arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:

...

...
Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer in the comments of this blog entry http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html

If you mean Leonard Rosenthol's comment at

http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html?sho... the general issue is Tagged PDF. It's not really supported yet in any variant of TeX, but there is an active group working on it at River Valley Technologies (http://lists.river-valley.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tex). I haven't been following closely, but there's definitely progress.

Arthur

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net

___________________________________________________________________________________

Hans Hagen

12:55 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Arthur Reutenauer < arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:

...
...
Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be feasible,

Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012, but the backend features may be available sooner. Many people are looking forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-) See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.

Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer in the comments of this blog entry http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html

Hopefully there can be found a way to incorporate these facilities in ConTeXt and/or LuaTeX when they emerge.

as it takes a bit of work i'll only look into it when i need it (in a project) or when i'm extremely bored; it's rather doable 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

luigi scarso

3:09 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

...

John Haltiwanger wrote:

...
On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Arthur Reutenauer < arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:

Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be

...
...
feasible,

Note that the final estimate for the stable release of LuaTeX is 2012, but the backend features may be available sooner. Many people are looking forward to using LuaTeX for producing XML-based and other formats :-) See http://luatex.org/roadmap.html for the roadmap.

Nice, glad to hear it. Also of interest are new semantic tagging facilities for PDF in the newest proposal for ISO 32000, mentioned by an Adobe engineer in the comments of this blog entry http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/semantically-richer-pdf.html

Hopefully there can be found a way to incorporate these facilities in ConTeXt and/or LuaTeX when they emerge.

as it takes a bit of work i'll only look into it when i need it (in a project) or when i'm extremely bored; it's rather doable

well , if you give us some hints maybe someone will present an article at next context meeting ... -- luigi

Hans Hagen

3:14 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

luigi scarso wrote:

...

well , if you give us some hints maybe someone will present an article at next context meeting ...

(1) wait for the rewritten backend (next year) (2) wait till structure in mkiv is stable but indeed we can discuss these things at the upcoming context meeting 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Arthur Reutenauer

3:16 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

...

well , if you give us some hints maybe someone will present an article at next context meeting ...

If you're interested in Tagged PDF, you should really look into what the River Valley guys are doing on the mailing-list I mentioned, and contact Ross Moore, Han The Thanh, etc. http://lists.river-valley.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tex Arthur

Mohamed Bana

2:25 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

i tend to write in Markdown, as the syntax is very light weight, then compile with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/). $ pandoc --toc --smart --number-sections --standalone -H header.tex -w context file.pdc -o file.tex $ texexec file.tex i think Aditya has some documents floating around somewhere. John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

Thank you Arthur, Mohamed, and Hans for pointing me towards the available modules.

As far as working towards semantical documents in TeX, I'll just have to settle for writing external RDF descriptors for the documents. I'll take a look at using XML as the source and feeding it into ConTeXt, but since I rather like conTeXt's markup over XML, I'm not sure how likely I will be to go that route. Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be feasible,

Thanks everyone for being so helpful, speaks volumes about the community you have here.

Regards, John C. Haltiwanger

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

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maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

John Haltiwanger

3:02 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Wow, that is handy! Thanks for the tip Modamed. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Mohamed Bana wrote:

...

i tend to write in Markdown, as the syntax is very light weight, then compile with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/).

$ pandoc --toc --smart --number-sections --standalone -H header.tex -w context file.pdc -o file.tex $ texexec file.tex

i think Aditya has some documents floating around somewhere.

John Haltiwanger wrote:

...
Thank you Arthur, Mohamed, and Hans for pointing me towards the available modules.

As far as working towards semantical documents in TeX, I'll just have to settle for writing external RDF descriptors for the documents. I'll take a look at using XML as the source and feeding it into ConTeXt, but since I rather like conTeXt's markup over XML, I'm not sure how likely I will be to go that route. Since Arthur implies that an XML output might one day be feasible,

Thanks everyone for being so helpful, speaks volumes about the community you have here.

Regards, John C. Haltiwanger

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

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net

___________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net

___________________________________________________________________________________

Wolfgang Schuster

26 May 26 May

4:27 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Am 25.05.2009 um 22:25 schrieb Mohamed Bana:

...

i tend to write in Markdown, as the syntax is very light weight, then compile with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/).

$ pandoc --toc --smart --number-sections --standalone -H header.tex - w context file.pdc -o file.tex $ texexec file.tex

I think you can automate the first step with a ctx file and use only 'texexec/context --ctx=pandoc' to create a pdf from your source file. Wolfgang

Arthur Reutenauer

25 May 25 May

11:23 a.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

...

These paragraphs seems to contradict. ConTeXt is useful if you use an environment more than once, but there are no ready-to-use ConTeXt environments.

You're probably confused by the term "environment". It means something very specific in ConTeXt, see for example section 2.3 of http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/cont-eni.pdf If by "environment" you mean some less down-to-earth, general document layout, e.g. for articles, books, presentation slides or letters, then yes, there are such ready-to-use layouts. Not always in the ConTeXt core, but they're there; for example, for letters you would use Wolfgang Schuster's letter module; for presentation, one of the solutions is Thomas Schmitz' and Aditya Mahajan's simple-presentation module, etc.

...

Yes, I meant RDF. XML is a very important format. I find it odd that TeX can generate PDF but cannot output simple XML.

Generating a document with a logical structure is really the opposite of what TeX does, at least in my view: in today's trend, you write a TeX document with a logical structure, and you generate PDF, a highly specialized format for describing the layout of a printed or on-screen page; it has rather few means of specifying logical structure (it's coming, but rather poorly supported by PDF producer applications at the moment). The same is of course even more true of DVI. Hence, what TeX does is to take a logically structured document, and to make it into a visually structured one. Note that I am not always convinced by the whole "separation of content and layout" creed which is heard very often as a selling point for LaTeX vs. MS Word etc., but there is some truth to it, and, generally speaking, you're still going from semantic markup to visual appearance, not the other way round.

...

So in order to have a semantical document I must write it in XML and then process it with ConTeXt?

Pretty much. ConTeXt is rather good at it. You have a lot of tools to process XML in the base code. There is also a module to deal with DocBook, but I think its development has stalled.

...

Is the capacity there (through LuaTeX perhaps) to write an XML generator?

The goal is that at some point, you will be able to redefine LuaTeX's backend, the same way you can act on the TeX engine at the moment. This will allow to control the output format entirely.

...

While I would expect the reasons for wanting XML output would be obvious

If I may, your statement might be biased by your own expectations. There are thousand people out there who use some form of TeX without even knowing about XML. But I know why you want it. As far as LaTeX is concerned, there are quite a number of toolchains that produce XML from some sort of restricted LaTeX markup. I'm not aware of anything similar for ConTeXt. Arthur

Aditya Mahajan

12:26 p.m.

On Mon, 25 May 2009, John Haltiwanger wrote:

...

unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available. I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a

There are no standardized thesis styles for universities mainly because there are no consistent specs. Most univs want you to use times, double spaced lines, wide margins, and some formatting guidelines regarding the chapter headings, table of content, page headers and footers. Setting these are easy in ConTeXt (and also LaTeX if you know the relevant packages). Universities do not provide an official thesis style (either in LaTeX or ConTeXt) because in most cases they do not have the resources to maintain them. Students figure something out, and then pass along their styles to the next generation. If the formatting guidelines change, the burden is on the students to correct the style, rather than on the university. When I was writing my thesis, it took me about a few hours to understand the formatting guidelines, which were a jigjaw puzzle. Statements like: Always use Times New Roman at 12pt as the main font. ... two pages down ... The abstract can be in 10pt or 12pt ... a few pages later, use any of the standard fonts. It also used vague terminology. Statements like leave two blank lines after the title (blank lines, er... for what fontsize, the bodyfont or the title font?). ConTeXt makes it really easy to make the formatting changes. Once I understood the formatting guidelines, writing the main style was very easy (with a few trips to the manual, and a few questions here on the mailing list). Making sure that the resultant style looked visually appealing while not violating the formatting guidelines too a lot of experimentation. As Hans said, you can think of ConTeXt as the "standard" thesis style. Setup a few commands, and you meet your formatting requirements. Write it in an environment or a module, and you can reuse it. Aditya

John Haltiwanger

12:35 p.m.

New subject: Seeking a Deeper ConTeXt: Questions for Initializing

Thank you Aditya. All that makes sense to me. It is quite clear from everyone's responses that the person on c.t.t who claimed ConTeXt is "only" for one-offs was not correct. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

...

On Mon, 25 May 2009, John Haltiwanger wrote:

unlike document classes), there are no pre-rolled environments available.

...
I am thinking here of standardized thesis environments for universities, or a

There are no standardized thesis styles for universities mainly because there are no consistent specs. Most univs want you to use times, double spaced lines, wide margins, and some formatting guidelines regarding the chapter headings, table of content, page headers and footers. Setting these are easy in ConTeXt (and also LaTeX if you know the relevant packages). Universities do not provide an official thesis style (either in LaTeX or ConTeXt) because in most cases they do not have the resources to maintain them. Students figure something out, and then pass along their styles to the next generation. If the formatting guidelines change, the burden is on the students to correct the style, rather than on the university.

When I was writing my thesis, it took me about a few hours to understand the formatting guidelines, which were a jigjaw puzzle. Statements like: Always use Times New Roman at 12pt as the main font. ... two pages down ... The abstract can be in 10pt or 12pt ... a few pages later, use any of the standard fonts. It also used vague terminology. Statements like leave two blank lines after the title (blank lines, er... for what fontsize, the bodyfont or the title font?).

ConTeXt makes it really easy to make the formatting changes. Once I understood the formatting guidelines, writing the main style was very easy (with a few trips to the manual, and a few questions here on the mailing list). Making sure that the resultant style looked visually appealing while not violating the formatting guidelines too a lot of experimentation.

As Hans said, you can think of ConTeXt as the "standard" thesis style. Setup a few commands, and you meet your formatting requirements. Write it in an environment or a module, and you can reuse it.

Aditya

___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net

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10 participants

participants (10)

Aditya Mahajan
Arthur Reutenauer
Bruce D'Arcus
Bruce D'Arcus
Hans Hagen
Henning Hraban Ramm
John Haltiwanger
luigi scarso
Mohamed Bana
Wolfgang Schuster