1Some Basic information
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3
4The first public versions of ConTeXt date from around 1996. There
5are currently two versions of ConTeXt :
6
7 MkII : to be used with pdfTeX and XeTeX
8 MkIV : to be used with LuaTeX
9
10In 2008 at the second ConTeXt conference the decision was made to
11freeze MkII . This means that only bugs are fixed and apart from an
12occasional addition no active development takes place . This is no
13real problem as the engines don ' t change much either .
14
15Early 2011 the code base between MkII and MkIV got split completely
16and there is no shared code any longer , apart from some styles and
17modules . From the perspective of ConteXt we now consider XeTeX to be
18obsolete although we will keep supporting it in MkII . As pdftex is
19still used in older workflows we will support that as long as it ' s
20around .
21
22The main files context . mkii and context . mkiv are normally not used
23directly but instead we use the interface specific formats :
24
25 cont - cs czech
26 cont - de german
27 cont - en english us
28 cont - fr french
29 cont - gb english uk
30 cont - it italian
31 cont - nl dutch
32 cont - pe persian
33 cont - ro romanian
34
35A MkII format is made with :
36
37 texexec -- make en nl metafun
38
39A MkIV format is made with :
40
41 context -- make en nl
42
43As MetaPost is part of LuaTeX there is no need for a special MetaFun
44format . Also , when you update ConTeXt , a new format will be generated
45automatically .
46
47You can preset commands etc in the file :
48
49 cont - sys . mkii a system file loaded at runtime
50 cont - sys . mkiv a system file loaded at runtime
51
52In the case of MkII , there is a fallback on cont - sys . tex ( backward
53compatibility ). If no file is found the file cont - sys . rme is loaded
54( only for MkII ). For MkIV this file is normally not needed .
55
56For questions and remarks on ConTeXt , one can subscribe to the list :
57
58 ntg - context @ ntg . nl
59
60by sending the message
61
62 subscribe ntg - context
63
64to the list server :
65
66 majordomo @ ntg . nl
67
68A good place to get information is the ConTeXt wiki :
69
70 contextgarden . net
71
72One can also find more info at :
73
74 www . pragma - ade . com
75
76or at the mirror sites mentioned there .
77
78Don ' t hesitate to ask questions . ConTeXt can do a lot , but the manuals
79always lag behind and can be incomplete .
80
81-------------------------
82Hans Hagen , pragma @ wxs . nl
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