Dear list,

Pandoc, if you have not heard of it before, is a rather brilliant program for 
converting text between different markup languages: it allows, in essence, for 
technology-independent writing. It has been mentioned a few times on this list, 
with Pablo Rodríguez recently developing a set of templates for typesetting its 
XHTML output (at https://github.com/ousia/from-pandoc-to-context). One of its 
aims is to ease the process of producing a high-quality PDF; it has the 
strongest support for LaTeX at the moment, but it seems to me that ConTeXt 
would ultimately provide a more reliable and lightweight solution. The basic 
support is already in place; it only needs to be more thoroughly updated to 
take advantage of MkIV.

I am working on improving Pandoc's generic ConTeXt template, at 
<https://github.com/jgm/pandoc-templates/blob/master/default.context>; the 
initial proposal is at <https://github.com/jgm/pandoc-templates/pull/138>, 
which aims to show more of ConTeXt’s potential to the user through making 
variables available that configure its options. I am still new to ConTeXt 
(having used LaTeX for several years), and could not find a recent starter 
document. The example at <http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Detailed_Example> is 
from 2006, and clearly does not exhibit the system’s full potential. I would be 
grateful to know of any potential areas for improvement.

If you feel even more inclined to develop the Pandoc support for ConTeXt, its 
writer can be found at 
<https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/src/Text/Pandoc/Writers/ConTeXt.hs>. 
In my experience, ConTeXt is much easier to use than LaTeX, but it is more 
difficult to get started with initially due to the lack of resources for new 
users; it is my hope that full support for it in Pandoc will provide one way of 
delving into it more deeply.

All best,

Andrew Dunning
PhD Candidate
Centre for Medieval Studies
University of Toronto
http://andrewdunning.ca

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