First Document
< Main Page | Second Step | Next Steps >
What is ConTeXt? What can I do with it? Let’s see. Take your favourite text editor, type in the following document and save it as a file hello.tex
.
\starttext Hello World \stoptext
It shows already a ConTeXt essential: everything's between \startsomething and \stopsomething.
I you don't have ConTeXt installed (yet), you can first try out the latest version using the web interface http://live.contextgarden.net.
If you already installed it, you can go to the shell/command line and type in
texexec --pdf hello.tex
and now ConTeXt will start. It will give you some output on your terminal
TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005 executable : pdfetex format : cont-en inputfile : test output : standard interface : en current mode : none TeX run : 1 This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.21a-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4) (/opt/context/current/texmf/web2c/natural.tcx) entering extended mode (./test.tex ConTeXt ver: 2005.08.19 fmt: 2005.8.19 int: english mes: english language : language en is active <protectionstate 0> ...
Don’t be worried. This is the way it should look. Once texexec has finished, it will leave behind a file called hello.pdf. Open it and you will see a "Hello world" on a virtual A4 paper and a page number.