ConTeXt Standalone

About

http://minimals.contextgarden.net

WRITEME

We wanted to provide:

• an easy to (no-need-to-)install ConTeXt distribution
• a fast and convenient way to update ConTeXt and binaries to the latest version (no need to fetch 100 MB when only minimal modifications have been made in the distribution)
• a refence ConTeXt distribution
• an easy way to revert to an older ConTeXt (in case the latest one is broken)
• probably some combination of rsync and svn will be used, but the exact concept is still not completely clear

We do not plan to provide:

• LaTeX packages (perhaps the really-basic-latex as an add-on package, but only if someone else has time to investigate what is needed)
• extensive support for whatever binaries or packages which are otherwise standard in TeX distributions: use TeX Live or MikTeX for that purpose

The minimals (will) contain:

• ConTeXt
• Fonts: most important TeX-aware ones
• pdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and Metapost (latest version, if possible)
• formats (need to be generated by user) for
  • ConTeXt, mptopdf and plain TeX for pdfTeX/XeTeX/LuaTeX
  • metafun and plain for Metapost
• it would be nice to have tex4ht as a package if someone can figure out what is needed to make it work

Supported platforms

• Windows
• Linux
• Linux, 64 bit
• Mac OS X Intel
• Mac Os X PPC
• other platforms on request (please send a mail to the ntg-context mailing list)

Installation

This is a description of how the first installation and any subsequent updates should work (or how it would be nice if they worked that way):

One should be able to download setup.zip (approx. 2MB) which would download all the other things (selected engines, fonts, modules, ...) on demand. It should contain:

• some really basic documentation (README, INSTALL)
• setup script
• texmf-[os]/bin/luatex + texlua symbolic link
• ... [finishme]

We need to:

• create files README INSTALL

• create a file context-minimals-seetings.lua (or some other self-explanatory name):
  • • rsync location (default: rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals, could be anything)
    •  ??? installation location (default is simply the current location (pwd))
    • engines (default: all - pdftex, xetex, luatex, metapost)
    • formats (default: english + dutch context for all the installed engines, metapost, metafun; optional: other interfaces, plain pdftex, xetex)
    • fonts (need to be reorganized/improved anyway, perhaps a list of fonts should be fetched)
    • once in the future: supported font encodings for pdftex (default: texnansi, ec, optional: greek, t5, t2a, t2b, t2c, ...)
    • third party modules (list needs to be fetched form the garden, default)
    • context version (default: current, other options: beta, highly-experimental (for "Hans-and-Taco-only"), specific-date in the case of a fixed version issue a warning at next update)
    • interactive flag: shoud the script ask for changes interactively again or should it simply reaspect & use them (defaut: interactive for the first time, after that automatic)

• create a file first-setup(.sh, .bat) (or with some other self-explanatory name), which:
  • checks if rsync exists (if not, an error is issued, saying please install rsync first)
  • checks for perl and ruby and issues a similar error/warning (in fact, we can still proceed to the next step and download things even if perl & ruby are not installed, but that doesn't make much sense)
  • detects the platform (straightforward for windows, for unix-like platforms the same kind of detection is used as later in setuptex)
  • does rsync to installation files themselves (in case mtx-update has changed in the mean time)
  • reads in context-minimals-seetings.lua (which engines, formats, fonts, modules to download ...) if interactive is set to true, ask for default settings again, otherwise respect those settings and continue
  • asks for installation location
  • creates (or updates) the file with settings (if interactive)
  • fetch files with rsync
  • create formats
  • suggest what to put into .bash_profile (or equivalent locations) to have context initilized automatically

Binaries

Binaries are mostly taken from TeX Live 2007, but new ones are used whenever available.

Sources of binaries

• TeX Live 2007 for most binaries and most platforms
• Akira's W32TeX for windows binaries (including metapost, LuaTeX, pdfTeX and XeTeX) - automatic
• for pdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and metapost for other platforms added manually whenever possible (nice if it could be automated, but no idea how)
• texmf/scripts/context/stubs from ConTeXt

List of included binaries

Core binaries

We will do our best to keep them as up to date as possible. If they're still not up to date for your platform and you know where to find them, please notify us, we will fix that. We might provide XeTeX and LuaTeX in separate packages (on TODO list).

• pdftex
• luatex
• texlua, texluac (only symlinks on "unix" platforms, in Akira's distribution luatex.dll is used + 3 small executables)
• xetex, xdvipdfmx
• metapost
  • dvitomp
  • makempx
  • mpost
  • mpto (can this be replaced by ConTeXt's variant in future?)

Other binaries

• kpathsea
  • kpseaccess
  • kpsestat
  • kpsewhich
• different tools
  • bibtex
  • dvipos
  • mktexlsr
  • pdftosrc

Stubs & other ConTeXt-related

• everything from texmf/scripts/context/stubs
• luatools, mtxrun
• texmfstart (take the latest version by Hans automatically: doesn't happen yet)

Font-related

Might be removed or moved to a special category of "font-related binaries", and only available as an additional package.

• only left for testing
  • afm2pl
  • afm2tfm
  • ttf2afm
• Knuth's
  • pltotf
  • tftopl
  • vftovp
  • vptovf

Might-be-removed-soon

• dvipdfmx
• dvips

Windows-only

Additional standard tools, such as unzip etc. TODO.

ConTeXt

There's a plan to provide three versions:

• stable
• beta
• broken (for Hans, Taco and nerds only)

And a plan to provide possibility to revert back to an older stable version. TODO.

Fonts

Fonts are split in three packages:

• used in both pdfTeX and XeTeX/LuaTeX: mostly math (pfb, map, enc, tfm)
• used in pdfTeX only: pfb, map, enc, tfm (those that are not present in "common")
• used in XeTeX/LuaTeX only: otf

Currently we have (the latest version, in sync with CTAN):

• Latin Modern
• Antykwa Torunska
• Iwona & Kurier
• TeX Gyre
• ams

Other fonts to be added:

• TODO

It is possible that we'll provide a really minimal package with LM only, and additional three packages (common, for new TeX, for old TeX) with all the other fonts.

Third-party modules & Other

• TODO
• also cont-* from Hans's page

Documentation

TODO

Implementation

See the talk page

Hans's requests

• upload rsync binaries from Delta (minimals/rsync/windows)
• reorganize fonts into fonts/data/e-foundry/texgyre/<everything>
• list directory contents
• list of files to fetch an old ConTeXt version