I am a mathematician, and have been using LaTeX on a daily basis since 1992, when I was a graduate student. I have recently started using ConTeXt, and am very happy with the facilities it provides, and with its self-contained system which does not require one to load external packages with subtle interactions.
One problem that I am facing is that the documentation of ConTeXt is often not enough for me to figure out what to do when a problem arises. I understand that documentation is perhaps not a priority for the project. As Hans Hagen wrote in `? Context', "... writing can get a lower priority in a time when quick and dirty answers can be found on the internet, mailing list or wiki. ... For what it's worth: whenever I have to solve a problem with a program (or language implementation) I run into cases where I have to look long to find (non conflicting) information. It just comes with the problems one wants to solve and TeX (ConTeXt) is not different." However, there is not a great deal of information on the Internet about solving ConTeXt problems. Whenever I ran into a LaTeX problem in the last several years, I used to find a solution, or a substantial step towards one, that was already documented on the TeX-LaTeX Stack Exchange. Unfortunately, it does not contain a similar amount of information about ConTeXt. In any case, I have started posting ConTeXt questions there, see https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/397463/146025 and https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/397607/146025 As for the mailing list, I posted three requests for help here in the last one week. When I bumped my first message after more than a day without any response, Tomas Hala kindly came to my rescue. The other two messages, posted four and two days ago, have not elicited any response yet. This contrasts with Aditya Mahajan's experience, which he describes in his interview at http://tex-talk.net/2012/08/textalk-an-interview-with-aditya/: "Most questions on the context mailing lists are answered within minutes ... look in the main manual and the wiki to see how to achieve the particular effects that you wanted, and if you cannot figure it out, ask on the context mailing list." I understand that we are all busy, and it is not easy to find time to answer novice queries on the list. Lastly, I found the Wiki useful sometimes for quick and dirty solutions to problems, and sometimes as a source of documentation. Yet there have been several cases where I could not find what I wanted in it. For example, I could not find the answers to my last two queries on this list and to my two questions on SE, in the manual, on the archives of this list, or on the Wiki. These problems mean that I have to spend much more time experimenting and searching before I find a reasonable way to get the things I want with ConTeXt. Given the beauty of the results that ConTeXt returns, I don't mind that. However, I wonder if there are others who have similar problems learning about ConTeXt, and if they have some words of advice for me. I am also interested in ways to help people with similar difficulties. Regards, Raghu. -- N. Raghavendra <ra...@hri.res.in>, http://www.retrotexts.net/ Harish-Chandra Research Institute, http://www.hri.res.in/ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 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://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
