No, I have not been using ConTeXt for ten years and I am still learning!
I am just referring to the fact pointed out by Herbert Simon (The
Architecture of Complexity) that it takes about 10 years for anyone to
learn any new subject.
I have come to understand that ConTeXt's speed in processing does not
have to do with our patience, like waiting for a dot-matrix printer.
(By the way, I started doing text processing using teletypes way
before TeX was even invented. Remember nroff?)
ConTeXt is also used for automated text-processing on the fly and this
has to be fast.
It is said that clang gives many more and much better error and warning
messages than gcc. ConTeXt has all sorts of "trackers" that can be
enabled if desired to get lots of debugging information.
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Trackers
Maybe there is room for someone to write a program (or script in lua!)
similar to "lint" that can check for errors. I do not believe that it is
worth the effort, though, as it will quickly become obsolete.
Alan
On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:32:29 +0200
"Keith J. Schultz" <schul...@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi Alan,
>
> In a way I agree one can live without the added syntax and semantic
> error reporting, But, as you say you have been using it for ten years.
> All are not that lucky. Then there are those beginners that simply
> have no idea what is going on. Because they do not know ConTeXt, TeX,
> or LaTeX, etc. This problem is more severe due to the fact that IMHO
> the documentation for ConTeXt does not state many things!
>
> Error checking should not be given up for performance sake!
> That is not good practice. If one can not wait a minute longer
> for a 500 page document, somebody has to learn to chill down.
>
> Been around Computers since the mid 80s, so I know what it is like
> to wait 5 minutes for a three page document, waiting for a TeX system
> render and create all those files to print it on a dot-matrix printer.
> Not, to mention the printing itself in graphics mode for the best
> quality.
>
> regards
> Keith.
>
>
> Am 15.10.2014 um 16:10 schrieb Alan BRASLAU <alan.bras...@cea.fr>:
>
> > On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 14:25:11 +0200
> > Keith Schultz <keithjschu...@icloud.com> wrote:
> >
> >> BUT, Michal I believe has a point. Or should I say has come across
> >> a FLAW, according to my view of things. ConTeXt should warn...
> >
> > I was warned (a few years ago) on the mailing list NOT to place any
> > text outside of structure elements. For example,
> >
> [snip, snip]
> > I cannot remember the example of what had gone haywire, but I
> > leaned my lesson (and started systematically using \start\stop for
> > everything, well, not for paragraphs as I find that a bit too
> > heavy...).
> >
> > As to WARNINGS: ConTeXt generally silently ignores incorrect coding,
> > unknown options, etc. One might call for all sorts of "bells and
> > whistles" but these come at a performance cost so I have also
> > learned to do without them. Of course, this sometimes makes
> > debugging one's errors a bit more difficult, but after 10 years or
> > so of practice one will no longer make many errors! (one of my
> > favorites still is "\startext") ;-)
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