Re: Re: Max Chernoff, Bruno, ConTeXt

Hi Dick,

On Thu, 2026-03-19 at 16:57 -0700, Richard Koch wrote:
> On my web page you will find https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/TeXShop-Context.zip
>
> Please download this and decompress it. Inside you will find two TeXShop engines
>  titled ConTeXt.engine and ConTeXt-TL.engine. You will also find
> a folder containing three samples named Hello-world.tex, HelloTL.tex, and
> StartTL.tex,
>
> On my machine, all three of these source files can be typeset by either engine.
> Note that at the top of each source file is the name of the engine being used;
> change this name to try typesetting by the other engine.

I don't use TeXShop at all, but some comments on the files:

1.  "ConTeXt" and "ConTeXt-TL" probably aren't the best names for the two
    engines. I'd recommend one of the following (unless you have
    backwards compatibility constraints that prevent you from changing
    the current names):

    - "ConTeXt (MkIV)" and "ConTeXt (LMTX)"
    - "ConTeXt (LuaTeX)" and "ConTeXt (LuaMetaTeX)"
    - "ConTeXt (MkIV)" and "ConTeXt"

    In any case, upstream has considered LMTX to be the
    default/recommended/supported engine since 2023, so I'd recommend
    having that be the default (again, unless you have backwards
    compatibility constraints).

2.  I can't find any results for "automake" in mtxrun.lua, so I believe
    that the "--automake" argument does nothing and can be safely
    removed.

3.  The sample files all look good to me. (As an added bonus, ConTeXt
    itself recognizes the following comments in the first line

        % engine=luatex

        % engine=luametatex

    and automatically chooses the requested engine. There's nothing at
    all wrong with the

        % !TEX TS-program [...]

    comments though.)

> There is one matter still up in the air. Previously I told users to get the
> latest ConTeXt from ConTeXt-Garden, and I had another engine that could
> be used to access that distribution, which changed regularly. But nowadays
> the whole ConTeXt is updated in TL about once a month, so I believe
> the ConTeXt Garden method of getting new things is obsolete. I'll shorten
> my document about ConTeXt to remove that choice. Perhaps
> in its place we should tell users how to access the latest material.
> Since I haven't been paying attention, advice on what I should write
> is welcome.

ConTeXt Garden still hosts the upstream installer and distribution (the
"Standalone Distribution") maintained by ConTeXt itself. The Standalone
Distribution is still maintained (and is the source of what's in TL),
and is the only distribution "officially" supported by upstream.

That being said, the ConTeXt in TL should behave almost identically to
the one from the Standalone Distribution, and I nearly always push the
latest updates to TL within 2 days of an upstream release, so there's
hardly any delay. So I wouldn't say that the version from ConTeXt Garden
is "obsolete", but that it's functionally equivalent to the version in
TL, so most users who already have TL/MacTeX installed are unlikely to
gain anything from installing the version from ConTeXt Garden.

Thanks,
-- Max