On 2018-05-15 14:47 -0400, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote: > On 05/15/2018 11:46 AM, Julio Rojas wrote: > > On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 5:18 PM, Richard Kimberly Heck <rikih...@lyx.org> > wrote: > > On 05/11/2018 03:37 PM, Jim Rockford wrote: > > In my 20+ years in the world of science, I have not known a single > > user of Lyx (~50 in total) who wasn't computer savvy. Why not just > > include a warning message that Lyx 2.3.0 may not function properly > > with MiKTeX distributions that have not been updated as recently as > > some specific date? > > That is more or less what was proposed by most of the development > team: > A warning at start-up, that LyX was going to update MikTeX, with an > option for the user to abort the install if they wish. The person > responsible for the Windows packages refused to include such a > warning, > and we did not think updating people's other software without asking > permission to do so was something we should do. So that has left us in > a > bad position. > > We are working now to try to produce a Windows installer. > Unfortunately, > none of the active development team use Windows, so it is taking > longer > than it otherwise might. We'd certainly welcome help from someone who > does use Windows. > > Riki > > > > > > And this is why I couldn't care less about MikTeX and have been using > TeXlive on my Windoze installations for a while. Is it possible to give > the > alternative to use Texlive instead of MikTex? > > > You can use LyX with whatever installation you like, but the "bundle" > installer > gives you MikTeX. > > Riki >
I have MikTeX on my windows installation (LyX 2.2.3, 17/5/17) and it came bundled. I've been using LyX for about ten years and find it enormously valuable, both at home on linux and at work on Windows. I can migrate a LyX file from one to the other without much difficulty (though I don't do that very often). However, the information that the bundle is bundling a specific version of LaTeX is fairly new to me -- by which I mean that I have gradually come to know it over the last few years, essentially as I install LyX whenever I have to move to a new machine. My install order on a Windows box is: emacs, cygwin, LyX, classic windows start menu, mercurial and then I can start to breathe more comfortably :-) But, joking aside, I used LaTeX about twenty years ago and found it valuable then for a thesis with a lot of formulas in it. Nevertheless my background knowledge of LaTeX didn't really include knowing that there are different versions. That looks a lot like different linux distros, am I right? And, I guess that the choice works much the same way as for linux distros. I choose Mint, for example, while servers at work tend to be RHEL or related, and so on. All this is very useful knowledge, doubtless I ought to have known it and somehow I didn't. Can I suggest that pointing Windows users at the relevant wiki page with all this detail on it might help? More generally I think that LyX does a very good job of hiding the fact that it is using plenty of other tools to generate the end document. Perhaps there is scope to explain that as well. John
