Hi list,
I have been evaluating LyX for a couple days, so these are the comments from a
new user. RTFM may apply in some but not all comments. 8^)
OS X 10.6.8
LyX 2.0.0
Minimum scrolling increment is greater than 1 pixel, causing jerky scrolling
(trackpad and thumbar). But it is not as jerky as some other Mac programs, even
though they are gradually getting fixed (Firefox). I miss the "glassy"
scrolling of "real" OS X programs; old-school scrolling hurts my head and makes
it hard to see stuff as it whizzes by. Also, scrolling seems generally sluggish
and laggy, as though the processor isn't keeping up.
Slow trackpad scrolling gesture has no effect, then causes sudden effect when
gesture speed exceeds some threshold. This happens surprisingly frequently when
doing casuual browsing or skimming text.
Command-w does not close windows. Probably a problem with Qt but surely someone
can find a work-around for this annoying behavior. Command-. works, why not
Command-w? For right-handed users, Command-. requires moving from the trackpad
to the keyboard and usually back again.
No link to forum or list in About or Help menus.
No summation with upper and lower decorations. (I know, RTFM). But why isn't
this easy or obvious?
Command-E does not insert selected text into the Find field. This is standard
UI behavior in virtually all Mac programs.
There is no shortcut to search for the next or previous occurance of the search
string; these apparently must be done from the Find dialog(s). The standard UI
for OS X is Command-G for Find Next and Command-Shift-G for Find Previous. With
these items, searching is fast and efficient and does not require even opening
the Find dialog box in many cases.
The Find dialog is modal. This combined with not having any command-key
equivalents for Next and Previous means that it is usually in your way to even
read what is being displayed.
The Find dialog requires two clicks (check box then button) to search backwards
assuming the current mode is forwards. There should be a Find Next _button_ and
a Find Previous _button_.
PDF previews are rendered as bitmaps! How do I change this?
Command-click on title bar does nothing; it should reveal a drop-down menu with
the path.
I won't be changing screen fonts often (Preferences -> Look & Feel -> Screen
Fonts) but super slow scrolling through the bazillion fonts that the universe
thinks I need is painful. Would prefer the standard OS X font picker.
Insertion cursor does not disappear when typing begins, thus blocking and
distorting nearby text. I hate this behavior and could not find a preference to
change it.
The actions of Function-up/down-arrow and Command-up/down-arrow are reversed,
at least on my PowerBook Pro.
There is no Window menu so there is no Zoom command which means that utilities
that my System Preference setting to zoom a window with a key combination
doesn't work.
Program crashed three consecutive times trying to change the background color
to white from the default pink but later I was able to change it without
crashing.
Template, Examples, etc. folders in Application Support/LyX are all empty. Not
sure if that's a mistake but it does disappoint a little once finding them.
Program crashed while saving.
Macs don't use the "Apply" pardigm in setting preferences--the preference is
applied as soon as it is changed. Also, the change is written to disk
automatically, so the "Save" button in the Preferences dialog needs to go. This
also creates confusion--do I have to save each preference change individually
or can I make several changes and then Save once?
No command-key equivalents in "unsaved changes" dialog box. And "Don't Save" is
less confusing and less alarming than "Discard" -- Discard what? "Discard
Changes" is better.
Program crashed on launch then New.
In the outline pane, clicking once on a section title (not the disclosure
triangle) does nothing (e.g., does not reveal lower outline levels). Double
clicking reveals the lower outline levels for about a second, with the
disclosure triangle pointing downward. But about 1-2 seconds later, that is
mysteriously undone, with the hierarchy disappearing and the triangle rotating
back to left-pointing. The only way to operate this feature is by clicking on
the disclosure triangle which is a much smaller target than the section name.
The default rendering creates bizarrely huge margins. Screen space is precious.
Scrolling through a (large) .cls file in TeX Info was extremely sluggish and
intermittent, with frequent pinwheeling. Memory usage climbed to more than 1.5
GB. Closing all windows and attempting to quit resulted in a non-responsive
program but with processor use varying between 70 and 90%. Finally had to
force-quit.
In 5.1 of the Customization manual I am directed to the menu item Tools ->
Reconfigure. There is no such menu item. Thus, I don't know how to install a
new package, IEEEtrans. I tried following the directions but substituting Tools
-> TeX Information -> Rescan instead of Reconfigure but to no avail. IEEEtrans
appears in the list Tools -> TeX Information -> LaTeX classes but also still
appears in the pop-up as Unavailable: article IEEEtrans. If I select it anyway,
I still get
The selected document class
article (IEEEtran)
requires external files that are not available.
The document class can still be used, but the
document cannot be compiled until the following
prerequisites are installed:
IEEEtran.cls
See section 3.1.2.2 (Class Availability) of the
User's Guide for more information.
wich is the same message that I got before installing IEEEtrans.
Upon quitting, received SIGSEGV crash, hope you have not lost any data.
My main goal for now is seeing if I can get IEEEtrans to work but as noted,
this has not gone well.
Thanks for all the effort--I don't want to sound ungrateful but rather hope to
provide a noob's view and maybe get some help.
Jerry
