It is based in part on the TeX typesetting system, and uses a document markup language for manuscript preparation.

Moreover, it offers extensive support for colors, backgrounds, hyperlinks, presentations, figure-text integration, and conditional compilation.

It gives the user extensive control over formatting while making it easy to create new layouts and styles without learning the low-level TeX macro language.

LaTeX's original vision, on the other hand, was to insulate the user from typographical decisions—an approach particularly useful for tasks such as submitting articles to a scientific journal.

[9] ConTeXt also provides a macro package for typesetting chemical structure diagrams with TeX called PPCHTeX,[10] as well as many other modules.

ConTeXt is free software: the program code (i.e. anything not under the /doc subtree) is distributed under the GNU GPL; the documentation is provided under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike license.

[18] The current version of ConTeXt is LMTX, introduced in April 2019 as the successor to Mark IV (MkIV).

ConTeXt was created by Hans Hagen[20] and Ton Otten of Pragma ADE in the Netherlands[21] around 1991[22][23] due to the need for educational typesetting material.

Around 2005, the ConTeXt developers began translating this to English, resulting in the version known as MKII, which is now stable and frozen[citation needed].