Within the last week, there were several updates for #ConTeXt #LMTX.

Since Hans didn’t announce anything but promised in a few cases that problems were fixed “in next upload”, they apparently contained small fixes.

The latest update for #ConTeXt #LMTX contains a parallel runner:

context --parallel test1.tex test2.tex test3.tex

context --parallel --pattern=test*.tex

context --parallellist myfile.cmd (filters context processing lines)

context --parallel test1.tex test2.tex test3.tex --terminal

Don’t get too excited, it’s not better than what e.g. a Makefile can do, except that it works on all platforms and doesn’t introduce dependencies. The general functionality of TeX is not parallelizable.

Yesterday’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX doesn’t contain any new features but “only” fixes and streamlining e.g. to get rid of obsolete MkII code.

Hans announced to be in “page builder” mode now, we can expect new features in that regard.

Today’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX contains #LuaMetaTeX 2.10.09 and new, configurable multipass paragraph builder.

It is activated with \setupalign[granular] and preliminary documented in lowlevel-lines.pdf (to be enhanced soon).

Hans Hagen already presented it to the participants of the last online meet-up.

🧵

This is superseded by

mtxrun --script install-modules --install tikz

With the next update, tikz stuff will probably move to its own TDS tree, texmf-tikz.

#TikZ #ConTeXt #LMTX

#ConTeXt #LMTX update:

Apart from the modules installer (that @fiee has to check) and subtle improvements in math (we’re now in tweaking penalties mode) there are a few changes:

– The endstrut in framed got lost but is back again; there is now also a location=inline option.

🧵

Created with #ConTeXt #LMTX:

https://ea.rna.nl/archimate/free-archimate-overview-pdf/

The story at the end tells a bit about LMTX and how it was done (it’s about 2500 lines of #Lua to parse the XML and produce the LMTX statements, and about 3500 lines of #METAPOST/Metafun to produce the graphics).

Gerben Wierda, @gctwnl

The latest #ConTeXt #LMTX update finally includes the module installer script that we were missing since the end of MkIV.

It supersedes the previously announced #TikZ installer script.

* list available modules:
mtxrun --script install-modules --list

* Install (all) modules:
mtxrun --script install-modules --install --all

There are still some teething troubles, some modules don’t comply to TDS, but we’re getting there.

We now officially have 3 new units. These were introduced at the 2023 #BachoTeX meeting in a presentation where the chair of the four person strong team also did the final live calibration (using the edithorial calibration instrument made for that purpose). An upcoming article in #TugBoat will explain the details of the process and also a careful mathematical analysis of how we reached the right value with a high precision. The actual implementation is the most boring part.

#ConTeXt #LMTX

🧵 …

Tuesday’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX contained:

“
• math (font) improvements (with mikael, roadmap stuff, fixes, compact mode testing)
• text (font) improvements (with mikael, side track of math)
• experimental stuff wrt project structure (with alan, complex huge files; prelude to possible partial overhaul)
• some language details like labels (with tomas & students, ongoing)
• little thingies that probably no one will notice unless it's bugged
”

There’s another update for #ConTeXt #LMTX as of today, and it finally includes the deprecation of support for inches.

Hans even bothered to outline a roadmap for #math typesetting development, see his original message:
https://mailman.ntg.nl/pipermail/ntg-context/2023/108088.html

The current update for #ConTeXt #LMTX is yet another enhancement for math font support and math typography.

Hans Hagen also reports:
“LMTX installs nicely on my Android (12) phone (userland Ubuntu) and #LuaMetaTeX compiles nicely from source (as it’s aarch64) in about a minute. No decent editor [for] real documents but who knows what a properly dockable (linux supporting) phone can do in a few years.”

The #ConTeXt #LMTX updates of the last few days contain experimental and yet undocumented code.

* natural tables (\bTABLE) can now have sections (\bTABLEsection) that get repeated on following pages, like headers (\bTABLEhead).

* There are new placement options for floats; they will get documented in the “step by step” manual.

* Simple setups for document-spanning references and lists, including ToCs and indexes for multi-volume books are in the works. (.tuc files get combined)

Today’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX further improved Antykwa support, this time with fancy radical bars, fraction bars, vertical bars, over and underbars etc.

#math #typesetting

Oh BTW, there were several small #ConTeXt #LMTX updates within the last weeks, mostly related to #math #typesetting.
Hans Hagen is still in math mode.
He planned to drop support for non-OpenType math fonts, but that would have meant dropping Antykwa Toruńska Math, Kurier Math and Iwona Math that still exist only in Type-1 format. So he re-implemented the old font support so that it’s mostly on the same level as OpenType math. Missing symbols come from AMS and LM fonts.

Like each month on the second wednesday, you’re invited to join our regular
#ConTeXt online meet-up
on January 11th, 15:00 CET (UTC+1)
at https://lecture.senfcall.de/hen-rbr-rku-oke

ConTeXt users of all levels are welcome!

(Thank you to @senfcall for providing our BBB room!)
#TeXLaTeX #lmtx #LuaMetaTeX

Tonight’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX should fix problems with #PGF/#TikZ.

While #MetaPost (#MetaFun) is the graphics language of choice in ConTeXt, TikZ should generally work. But some modules like pgfplots needed new loaders due to the low level changes in #LuaMetaTeX.

The first update for #ConTeXt #LMTX in 2023 is up!

“There are not that many changes, most relate to updating manuals. Currently we're looking at the metafun / luametafun and lowlevel manuals. …
when we update manuals that is not automatically reflected in new PDFs (processing happens outside the tree on temporary paths). So, manual sources can be more up to date than manual PDFs.” (Hans Hagen)

Today’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX adds some features to tabulate, but it seems to contain a bug that breaks processing, at least for some users on Linux.

EDIT: the issue is fixed (apparently some incompatibility between different versions of GCC).

Today’s update for #ConTeXt #LMTX fixes a problem with xtables and contains some more experimental code.