On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 07:56:53PM -0500, Praedor Atrebates wrote:
> I don't know what this means. I write a paragraph in OO, in Lyx, and in
> Abiword. Same paragraph. I then print it. It looks identical regardless of
> what I used to generate it. The text is whatever quality the printer can
> produce. There is nothing magic about latex/lyx output to printer.
Up until now, in most cases I *could* see differences. Small ones,
granted, but thigs like "fl" and similar combinations (forgot the
proper typograhic name for it) almost always look better with LaTeX,
asit does them typographically correct. That's something WYSIWYG
programs traditionally had a very hard time with (and still have) and
the LaTeX output almost always looks just that tad more professional.
Further, the printout always looks the same with LaTeX, independent of
the printer (other than plain resolution issues - it will look a bit
more coarse on a 300dpi than on a 1200dpi). Formatting will be the
same, the same chapter will be on the same page, things like that -
and that's exactly where I've always had major headaches with all
WYSIWYG's I've used. Change the printer and things begin to move
(especially with Word). And then I haven't even talked about
mathematical formulas, something where LaTeX *really* shines.
That's one of the reasons why it's still widely used in research
circles.
[...]
> from which the figure was first referred to. In something like Word,
> wordperfect, OO, Abiword, etc, I KNOW where page breaks are and will be.
> What you see is exactly what you get.
[...]
Within limits - I've seen this break too often to trust it...
> printer). This is HELL when you are trying to add graphics the page after
> the first reference in the text.
[...]
I always added my graphics inline after the first reference by simply
adding the corresponding "include" (that's not the reight word, but you
know what I mean) after the first time I referred to it. And then it got
placed after the first reference without me having to know anything
about page breaks. I've hardly ever had to add page breaks manually in
LaTeX - something which I have to worry about in almost every single
document in WYSIWYG's. Every now and then LaTeX and I would disagree
over the placing of an inline graphic, but even that was rare. It
*can* be daunting to convince LaTeX to do something different from
what it has been taugh, though, I give you that.
Also, I've never actually used LyX for documents - I always just typed
away in XEmacs (which has an excellent LaTeX mode), just like I do for
HTML (in fact, often I use both in very similar ways).
[...]
> Many words are not properly hyphenated in lyx. All too often you have set
> your right margin to be just right.
[...]
Strange. I never ever had an issue with that in plain LaTeX. Quite the
contrary, it was a blessing how well that worked compared to
WYSIWYG's... Odd.
Looks like my experiences just were a lot better (and a *lot* worse
with WYSIWYGs). Also, a good editor with a good LaTeX mode can go a
long way in not having to remember cryptic commands. I had a look at
LyX once, but dumped it for pretty much the same reason I don't use
pseudo-WYSIWYG[0] HTML editors - it's not the right tool for using
those systems/languages.
Cheerio,
Thomas
[0] There IS NO WYSIWYG FOR HTML! Pity too many people pretend it exists
- with their pages looking accordingly bad...
--
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Thomas Ribbrock http://www.ribbrock.org
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