ConTeXt

ConTeXt is amazing new way of creating TeX based documents. I've been a LaTeX user for more than 15 years, and this is the first time I've seen a good alternative. ConTeXt provides good integration with PDF and MetaPost, handles multiple re-runs (to get the references correct), has multiple language interfaces, provides full color support, has some xml-stuff (not so important I guess), and so on. However, the main reason to consider ConTeXt is that it gives you full control over the page layout (the glue of TeX made it almost impossible to align text and graphics to a grid - in ConTeXt this is done with a single command). A nice introduction to ConTeXt is availalble from the January issue of PracTeX (the \starttext column will continue with more ConTeXt stuff the following months). The ConTeXt community wiki and fiëé TEXnique (select ConTeXt and "for surfers") are also nice sources of ConTeXt related information.

February 2 2005 (aa)