ConTeXt was: auctex [was: [OS X TeX] First post to the list]

[Gerben Wierda]

> As for stone-age Babel, I don't know, I use ConTeXt and consider the
> entire LaTeX stuff stone-age :-)

That  may be true, but after switching (partly) from LaTeX to ConTeXt (and
liking much of it) I also find that LaTeX is still superior when it comes
to conceptual writing versus visual writing.

E.g. in ConTeXt, much conceptual stuff is not supported out of the box and
you need to write it yourself. E.g. there is no (NEN/DIN/etc) letter
support, where I can say things like

\startletter[from=gwletter] % looks for gwletter.tex
\letterto{Thomas A. Schmitz}
\letteropening{Dear Thomas,}
text
\letterclosing{Yours,}
\stopletter

ConTeXt is a layout-approach. And even then, its units are visual. If I
want to have a quote inside a paragraph, and my paragraphs are indented I
get

    bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla
      quote quote
      quote quote
    bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla

instead of (as it should be)

    bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla
      quote quote
      quote quote
bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla
bla bla bla bla bla

(the same for a midaligned table as part of the running text etc.). That
is because for ConTeXt all three parts are visual layout based *separate*
entities, while in LaTeX the paragraph is conceptual of which the quote is
a part (I get the second form if I just leave out the whitespace after the
quote)

G

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