Re: Org to ConTeXt exporter?

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Hello, Jonathan,

Jonathan McHugh <indieterminacy@libre.brussels> writes:

> I have wondered about the interoperability between Context and Latex.
>
> As somebody who (previously) invested a lot of time into Latex, my migration 
> to
> Context (due to its emphasis on Lua) grew problematic once other commitments
> grew.

What I like about ConTeXt is its (let's say) avant-garde vocation. But
for my everyday work I prefer LaTeX: more extensible, more versatile,
even more documented. But we must accept that ConTeXt is also an
advanced typographic laboratory where many functionalities also end up
in LaTeX over time. In fact, as far as I know, the future LaTeX3 adopts
some ideas from ConTeXt.

On Lua, LuaLaTeX also has good support. And many new LaTeX packages are
already getting very good use of LuaTeX features.

> The lack of Context support in Org-Mode has made me consider reverting
> back to Latex.

I know some advanced ConTeXt users (I am not) who are very interested in
migrating to Org Mode. In that aspect, I think a native exporter to
ConTeXt would be of great help.

Generally speaking, I think Org is the perfect interface to use TeX and
friends. One of the things I like the most about Org Mode is that it
allows working in (La)TeX at a very high level. Of course, for advanced
use, the more you know about LaTeX and TeX, the better. For example, if
I work on a large book, I usually write the entire configuration (the
preamble, my macros, my LaTeX code, etc.) to an Org file, and then I generate
a Preamble.tex file using tangle. I have a master file and several
subdocuments for the parts and sections of the book. And I make heavy
use of Org Publish. But in all that workflow, LaTeX is always in the
background. It is mainly a matter of comfort: I love TeX and its
derivatives, its power and its typographic refinement, but its language
is very verbose and the sources are difficult to debug. Org mode is much
more human readable. And even much more readable and comfortable than
Markdown.

> If I had a lot of time it would be wonderful to develop parsing
> expression grammars to capture it all, irrespective of direction ... mmm 
> time....

Yes, time is the problem: I think TODO lists were invented to have a
foot of mud in the future :-)

Regards,

Juan Manuel