[texhax] available on-line documentation

[John R. Culleton]

On Tuesday 29 August 2006 15:49, Juergen Fenn wrote:
> William Adams <will.adams at frycomm.com> writes:
> >> LaTeX requires an in depth knowledge of the library of styles.
> >> The _LaTeX Companion_ is rather expensive at $51 or so from
> >> Amazon. Fortunately with pdftex or Context there is plenty of
> >> free doucmentation.
> >
> > There's a lot of free documentation on LaTeX as well:
>
> Another overview of documentation on CTAN and elsewhere is gathered
> together in the TeX Catalogue:
>
>   http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/bytopic.html#refmans
>
> But, coming back to ConTeXt, there is no documentation available in
> print so far, right? I think this is a real disadvantage as compared
> to LaTeX or plain. Is someone writing on a book on ConTeXt? Or is it
> still too early for this as ConTeXt is very much in development?
>
> Regards,
> Jürgen.
>
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I printed out (almost) all the manuals and put them in ring
binders. The sources are available on some  at least.  But a real
live book would be nice too. The godfather of Context, Hans Hagen
has a day job, and also keeps up with all the conversation on the
Context list.  Periodically he fires off another manual covering
some specific topic or new feature.  

My beef with Context documentation is not that it isn't in hard
copy form but that the basic manual hasn't been updated since
2001, and Context seems to grow far more rapidly than Latex. If
HH could clone himself he could put his doppelganger in charge of
compiling all the manuals, Wiki instructions etc. into a single
document or even a coordinated multivolume set. However that
would be a temendoous undertaking. To parody Gertude Stein or
perhaps Dorothy Parker, there is too much there there. 

-- 
John Culleton
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