On Sat, 4 Jan 2014, Madhusudan Singh wrote:
Put simply, I find LyX confusing. Its not seamless. The preamble goes to a box inside document settings (I mean, really?).
Without doubt, someone will find issues regardless of how the menus are organized. Once you're used to them (and I replaced LaTeX/emacs with LyX many years ago), it becomes familiar and easy.
If I enter any LaTeX code with command+L (I am using this on a Mac), it stares at me in ugly red on that sickly pale yellow background. How do I "convert" it to visual form (LaTeXIt or preview-latex style)?
By changing the colors to what you want? Try Tools => Preferences -> Look & Feel -> Colors. I much prefer the pale yellow background to the bright white background that used to be the default. Of course, I work with linux, not OS X.
I have defined some rather nifty beamer macros that I started using with LaTeXian (its commercial) which is a beautiful piece of software. If I put them into the preamble, is there any way to get a live preview? After all, if I type in stuff in LyX without using any LaTeX commands, I am staring at a live preview of sorts. So, LyX should have the capability to "understand" the LaTeX I have thrown at it and process it (TeXmacs does this, btw.).
Have you tried ^x-p (for print preview using emacs keyboard shortcuts)? That's how I check for overlong lines and other aspects that need to be tweaked. What I see on the screen looks nothing like the compiled output, but the preview (and it must be somewhere on a menu) shows me what the TeX output looks like.
I have searched through forums etc. for some defining work philosophy of LyX. I find numerous references to how it is supposed to be so much easier than LaTeX. Such statements are generally written to cater to LaTeX scared wannabes from the Microsoft Word nightmare land.
I find it much easier to use than LaTeX because it requires less typing. For frequently used functions I have defined keyboard chords. For the rest, I either click on the icon or (much less frequently) traverse the menus. As a touch-typist I prefer to keep my hands on the keyboard, but rather than typing all the LaTeX commands I let LyX enter them for me with a simple chord or icon click.
But can someone help this hardcore LaTeX guy get LyX? I am using it out of necessity (Keynote files are huge and I just do not think it is a good idea to waste so much space). So, I want to be able to love it :)
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