Re: Org to ConTeXt exporter?

[Jonathan McHugh <indieterminacy@libre.brussels>]

Hello Juan,

I investigated further the Context engine for Skribilo:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=skribilo.git;a=tree;f=src/guile/skribilo/engine;h=9c6353eb7c6eae70de007c2f0a8f01092ae669a2;hb=HEAD

While I cant comment on it's Context engine functionality or efficacy, it clearly has a
decent breakdown of usecases across its 1300 lines. It appears to have
had low updates frequency, probably as a consequence of the stability of
Context's syntax (rather than the momentum of the DSL). It may be useful
as a checklist of key terms to tick off, if not a consideration for
framing anything to serve Org-Moders.

I have CC’d Ludovic Courtès, who has spearheaded Skribilo and all the
commits for it’s Context engine. Judging by his output within the Guix
community it’s possible that he may have some insights concerning this
thread:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2020-12/msg00731.html

Part of Skribilo’s homepage blurb intrigued me:
"Last but not least, Skribilo can be thought of as a complete document
programming framework for the Scheme programming language that may be
used to automate a variety of document generation tasks. Technically,
the Skribilo language/API is an embedded domain-specific language
(EDSL), implemented via so-called “deep embedding”. Skribilo uses GNU
Guile 3.0 or 2.x as the underlying Scheme implementation."
https://nongnu.org/skribilo/index.html
Still early in my Lisp journey, I do not know whether it would be
abhorrent/inelegant for the eLisp orientation of Org-Mode to defer to Guile (at the
backend) for outputting in different formats.

Kind regards,


Jonathan

Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> writes:

> 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     


-- 
Jonathan McHugh
indieterminacy@libre.brussels