In case some people (LyX-developers?) like to hear about it: LyX 1.0 got
overwhelming feedback during a public demonstration in Berlin.
Last weekend, the Berlin Linux User Group <http://www.belug.org> held its
traditional Linuxtage ("Linux days"), a public and free event intended to
give visitors a practical impression of Linux. As every year, BeLUG members
had brought their own computers for public display to Akademischer Verein
Hütte in central Western Berlin, the longtime Linux-supporting bookstore
J.F. Lehmanns offered related literature, two representatives of SuSE did
their best to get their distribution running on a brandnew IBM computer, and
there was a series of lectures and demonstrations on Linux-related topics.
My own presentation of LyX 1.0, scheduled for Sunday at 1:30 p.m., was
addressed at users of traditional word processing software and not at
TeXperts. Of all Linuxtag presentations, it drew by far the most attention -
the presentation room was packed! (I guess there were around 40-50
listeners.)
After explaining the WYSIWYM concept and loosing (too many) words on
configuration caveats, I practically demonstrated LyX/LaTeXs power in
handling complex structured documents and its excellence in footnotes,
margin notes, cross-references, sectioning in combination with table of
contents creation and page headers, nested lists, split documents and
export/re-import of LaTeX code, split documents, bibliographical entries,
and its collaboration with BibTeX/Barracuda. With the help of a data beam
and a networked X11 display from my own PC and some foils I had made with
LyX and FoilTeX, I could show how LyX works. Some people seemed to have
merely read about LyX (perhaps in the current issue of the German computer
magazine c't?), others only knew it from earlier versions they installed
from the Linux distributions they used, and they were truly impressed of
what they saw!
At the end, I mentioned some features planned for future LyX versions, with
particular emphasis on the effort to make LyX GUI-independent. You can
probably imagine that the prospect of a reunited LyX and KLyX and a Gnome
version of LyX made all people happy, but you may not have expected this:
The audience _freaked out_ of enthusiasm when I mentioned the project of a
curses frontend to LyX!
(I still keep receiving E-Mail from people who ask me for more details about
this, and unfortunately I couldn't tell much more than the above.) So, if
any LyX developers are reading, be assured that your work is being highly,
very highly appreciated! Kudos to you all. My statement that the Gimp and
LyX were the two killer apps of the Linux/Free Software community found
unanimous consent. Don't let your view be skewed from Slashdot-type,
Quake/Gimp/MP3-fixated geek-chic kids who put the LyX 1.0 release somewhere
under "Friday quickies". I am sure that user adoption of LyX will gain
additional momentum once LyX 1.0 has made it onto the major distribution
CD-ROMs.
Florian
--
Florian Cramer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, PGP public key ID 6440BA05
Permutations/Permutationen - poetry automata from 330 A.D. to
present: <http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/index.cgi>
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