On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 9:10 PM Richard Kimberly Heck <rikih...@lyx.org> wrote: > > On 9/14/18 2:38 AM, Baris Erkus wrote: > > If the intention is more like a complete WYSIWYG software package (or > > bundle) allowing users to produce documents right after installation > > without much hassle of Tex and other setups and preventing them from > > dealing with low-level Latex programming, it would be more reasonable > > to develop LyX as a bundle/package of LyX Frontend+TeX system+misc > > components. This would make the bundle more predictable and manageable > > if the components of the package are package-specific and they are > > developed specifically for the package. In this case, the TeX system > > should be customized by the LyX developers and should not be allowed > > to be updated by a third party software. This is the approach taken by > > Scientific Workplace and Bakoma, I guess. > > > > If the intention is develop only a powerful frontend that allows users > > to juggle around the TeX system, to do their own customization, allow > > different TeX systems to be used (and let the TeX developers to do > > job of developing TeX systems) and even maybe allow users install > > their own addons and functions to LyX, then LyX should have a module > > that can communicate with different TeX systems efficiently and should > > be immune to changes and updates in the TeX system. > >
This was a great thread last month and I'm sorry I did not add this back then. 1. We changed over to TeXLive on Windows systems and encourage all LyX users here to do the same. It seemed as though every time we had a workshop, the MiKTeX users were chronically locked up by the failure to get the packages installed. It is much easier to take the "one giant distribution" and install it. (https://crmda.ku.edu/latex-help) The only critical flaw in TeXLive we have encountered is that it does not include texi2pdf. Because of that absence, the R team is still devoted to MikTeX as a part of the tool chain to build/use R for windows. I spent a while trying to figure out how to compile texi2pdf on Windows and gave up. (It appears to me the efforts to make open source things work on windows are fraught with danger. The Windows test system here has 5 or 6 different Cygwin-based installations and the path is a tangled web of incompatible libraries and executables. Sorry, that's just a Unix guy in foreign territory whining.) There is one LaTeX distribution project worth tracking in this vein. Yihui Xie, who LyX users will remember as an important contributor in LyX support for Sweave and knitr, offers an R package "tinytex" (https://yihui.name/tinytex/). It is a MikTeX-style alternative distribution based on TeXlive. Although I gave up with the "on demand package installation" idea for LyX/MikTeX, I also would not bet against this new thing. The creator has been wildly successful in ways that, frankly, I thought were impossible. But, honestly, for the absolute beginner, the simplest thing is to just install LaTeX everything: TeXLive! A 2GB download is feasible for almost everybody these days. Disk space is cheap and not too many of us are running LaTeX in our cell phones. 2. I wrote a help page called "How to Cheat on your LaTeX Homework: A Beginner's Guide to LyX and LaTeX" and has the theme of the earlier posts in this tread. We offer workshops with that idea. I agree with the idea that one of LyX's best contributions is the Code view window. I prefer to write with LyX, but sometimes my team members are hard core "raw" LaTeX users and I have to go with that. Also, we have more demand to write documents with R markdown. I keep LyX open so I can remember "how did LyX turn a table sideways" or how did they get a table to have borders and joined cells "just so." Without LyX, I find it is much more error prone to make he layout just right. I end up Googling and finding incorrect answers from strangers.There are too many people that are willing to offer advice that is based on incorrect code or outmoded and unusual packages. And, once you follow the badly thought-out advice of an isolated individual in the internet, you are in a world of hurt. Almost all of the time, the LaTeX code that LyX prepares is accurate and understandable in the "raw" LaTeX document we write. Best regards pj -- Paul E. Johnson http://pj.freefaculty.org Director, Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis http://crmda.ku.edu To write to me directly, please address me at pauljohn at ku.edu.
