Because conTeXt exists and is really much better at that sort of thing, having full native support for things like color, figures that GO WHERE YOU PUT (glares

Because conTeXt exists and is really much better at that sort of thing, having full native support for things like color, figures that GO WHERE YOU PUT (glares at latex floats). It can all kinda of fancy sidebars, infoboxes, all that InDesigny sort of stuff. You can tell it was built from the ground up for books, and not scholarly publications. In that respect it’s actually closer to plain TeX. It doesn’t try to be overly semantic because books are complex beasts, and there really is no useful-but-wrong simple model that doesn’t handicap you. Like, not all books have chapters. Some have hundred of very short chapters, with multiple on a single page. It’s also much more “batteries included”. Basically; trying to do a book in LaTeX you end up fighting the defaults, and for some there are NO good reliable overrides. Take a look at the manual (http://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/ma-cb-en.pdf http://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/ma-cb-en.pdf) page 83 (numbered) 87 in the pdf. Imagine trying To the that in LaTeX.