On Jun 13, 2008, at 6:40 PM, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote: > Am 2008-06-12 um 11:00 schrieb Andrea Valle: > >> The fact IMHO is that there's a potentially large base of ConTeXt >> users which are willing to learn the syntax but are scared about >> terminals, setting paths etc >> (well, me too: knowing substantially nothing of unix I'm never >> comfortable with unix aspects of my system) >> So, an installer is really welcome. > > If if you got it installed, you next will need a GUI for running > ConTeXt, and if some problem arises, you are further away from the > solution than ever. > :-( > > Sorry, you can't use TeX in a decent way if you can't use a shell (AKA > command line AKA Terminal AKA DOS box). > > Otherwise we get a system where everything is configured "under the > hood" by some administrator - and you are in really bad luck if you > happen to be your own newborn administrator and read everywhere "if > you don't know what to fill in here, go ask your administrator". > > Please everyone try to become computer literate! > (see also works by Friedrich Kittler) > You took the words out of my mouth; I was going to write in a similar vein. Creating a GUI installer will only give false hopes to the "potentially large base of users." They may be able to install, but will soon run into trouble which can't be solved without a little knowledge of the command line, about paths and configuration files. If you're a billionaire, you could pay a couple dozen programmers to write a GUI for all these settings. But as long as no Mark Shuttleworth pops up, I think it would be better to avoid any misunderstandings. If you're allergic to the command line, TeX is not for you.
Just my 2 cents... Thomas ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________________________
