Re: [AUCTeX] ConTeXt MkIV Support

[Joost Kremers]

On Fri, Sep 02 2016, Tobias Berndt wrote:

> It's a petty and I have no idea why TeX users not realize that ConTeXt
> MkIV is something like the TeX of the 21. century (even Donald Knuth
> recommends it :)! It is modern, more elegant and logical in writing
> code and supports real XML en passant.

I guess that has to do with familiarity. People hear of LaTeX and often
think that the term 'TeX' is just a synonym or short-hand for it. I
suspect only the technically inclined only ever get to the point where
they hear about ConTeXt.

Familiarity leads to popularity (relative poplarity, of course, since
out there, it's still Word that Rules Them All™), and that leads to many
LaTeX packages, which are generally not compatible with ConTeXt, and
many journals offering a LaTeX template but not a ConTeXt template.

Which in turn will keep even many technically inclined from switching to
ConTeXt.


On Mon, Sep 05 2016, Tobias Berndt wrote:
> Since ConTeXt IV can things a lot better for a
> direct XML export, many structures need to be closed after using, e.g.
> instead the command \section{Headline} we need:
>
> \startsection[
>   reference=sec:hd,
>   title={Headline },
>   ]
>
> \stopsection
>
> and that's a kind of cumbersome ... and it would be a big help to have
> a nice shortcut to do it.

You could also use yasnippet for this sort of thing, of course. I do
quite a few LaTeX constructs with yasnippet instead of using the
shortcuts provided by AUCTeX, because typing a few letters and then
hitting TAB is usually quicker for me.

> Or, if you want to use ConTeXts proper XML
> export, you should edit a list
>
> \startblabla
> \startitem First \stopitem
> \startitem Second \stopitem
> \startitem Third \stopitem
> \stopblabla

I'm sorry, but that's just horrible. There's a reason why I hate XML
with a vengeance and unnecessary verbosity is a big part of that. I
don't see any reason why a *source* format should have that kind of
verbosity. After all, programs such as Pandoc manage to convert Markdown
into proper XML successfully, and Markdown is much less verbose than
even LaTeX.

Ok, my apologies for the rant... :/

--
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments