On Wednesday 05 September 2001 11:52, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I am using LyX to prepare conference papers and also my PhD thesis. What I
> find really powerful is the ability to format a large document in different
> ways, without having the source change in any substantial way. This is very
> useful when I am writing a paper but I not sure of the conference/journal
> that the work appear in. Of course using Word, it is possible to change
> styles etc. but every time you make a change the source document gets
> modified, with all the risks associated with changing a complex,
> proprietary file.
>
> I also found when doing my masters dissertation using Word that the file
> grew to a huge size (> 30Mbytes) over time. This made it difficult to load,
> send via email and generally screwed things up. It also increases the
> probability that a corruption (due to a bug in Word for example) will make
> the document unusable, as happened to me at least once.
I encountered LyX shortly after finishing my MA, and my first thought was
"God, I wish I'd had this when I was writing my dissertation!" As Pete
points out, it _is_ possible to mimic logical formatting with Word et al.,
but it took me as long to get all the styles set up as it would have done to
have typed everything manually, and then some other office user went and
wiped them off a few weeks later anyway.
Robin
