I join the thanks to the other members of the list. I think that good
documentation is essential in any project, and, in particular, a
low-level explanation of ConTeXt that is understandable without being an
accomplished TeX programmer seems to me a great idea.
As for TeX documentation, I don't know what the members of the list who
know more than I do will think, but I think The TeXBook is a great book,
very didactic. I also like (although at a different level) TeX By Topic,
El 12/2/24 a las 8:49, SirColeman via ntg-context escribió:
Greetings all. I have a passion for typesetting. I found that
currently the best typesetting systems are those that are based on
TeX. Of them, there are LaTeX, and ConTeXt.
LaTeX is very well documented and popular; ConTeXt, on the other hand,
is apparently very powerful and capable, but is not as well documented.
There are things that are spectacularly well documented, others that
only show hints, and leave it up to the user to figure things out on
their own, and others still that won't even compile on a more recent
version of ConTeXt (apparently the proper way to access a counter's
value in ConTeXt is to use \getnumber or \convertednumber, and not
\getcounter. That's just an example).
I thus thought, as an exercise in typesetting, in writing, and also to
help the ConTeXt documentation, to write a new book, a large book,
that teaches the details of how ConTeXt on a lower level works,
allowing one to understand how to utilize low level typesetting
features for anything more sophisticated than a simple book or
article. By lower level, I mean how things like heads, items,
references, alignment, tables, etc., work. Also, I would like a book
that teaches things like how to program it using lua, how to
understand and utilize the underlying engine itself (the low level
LuaMetaTeX), how to even use DocBook with ConTeXt, etc.
(I do realize that there already are manuals for lua in ConTeXt and on
LuaMetaTeX, etc., and manuals on various different parts of ConTeXt,
and I'll certainly be learning from them whenever their particular
topic comes, but I reserve the opportunity to rewrite parts of these
manuals for this book, as is necessary for the book's purpose, perhaps
referencing these manuals for further details.)
In particular, I want to go a step beyond the book "A not so short
introduction to ConTeXt Mark IV", and teach the particularly advanced
features, where there is sparse information. Particularly, it's meant
to serve as one complete reference, instead of having to hunt for
different manuals, which explain things differently, and with the
consequence that it's hard to find a particular piece of information
because its scattered around so many different places.
This book should serve as the one and only final documentation that
you would need. It would contain everything in a highly cohesive
format, in one place, and make particular pieces of information
particularly easy to find. I realize that this is a very ambitious
undertaking, but I find that a unified source of information is better
than information with varying levels of quality scattered across more
places than one can hold in his head.
I just have one question: What is all the necessary material to
understand and utilize the low level TeX programming language itself?
That is, what do I need to read to learn to be able to read the
ConTeXt source code itself (which is written in TeX---and lua, but I
can help myself in that regard)? Is the "Low Level TeX" set of manuals
all that I'll need, or will I need other sources of information too?
And also, is it worth learning Plain TeX, and reading The TeXbook, or
is not necessary?
And, I'm grateful to have an alternative to LaTeX. It's certainly
promising, but I would like to help make it appealing, by making it
easy to learn and master it, and provide a single source of
information. I'm grateful for having ConTeXt.
P.S. If I have bugs to file, should I file them on this mailing list,
or on the dev-cont...@ntg.nl mailing list?
And, to all beginner ConTeXt users: What would you like to see covered
in this book?
Thanks.
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Joaquín Ataz López
Departamento de Derecho civil
Universidad de Murcia
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