On Monday 03 January 2005 08:23 am, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > Actually, I would interested to know what your other pet peeves wrt > LyX are, besides the fact that it does not do scripting and you are > afraid it may not be there in a few years.
Here are my (Steve Litt) pet peeves about LyX: 1. No character styles (I understand this is coming in a later version). 2. Paragraph styles (environments) are soooooo hard to construct. I understand this is more a function of LaTeX than LyX, but it's really too bad LyX doesn't give us some utilities to input font, margins, spacing, displacement and the like, and spit out code for a LyX environment, to be pasted in a .layout file. Such code wouldn't need to be exact, because using it as an example, one could tweak it til one got the exact look he/she needed, both in the LyX authoring environment and (especially) in the resulting .pdf. 3. Although I haven't perceived a lack of developer involvement or imminent death, I've wondered why so much developer effort has been diverted (my perception) to a QT front end, which in my opinion is cosmetic. To me, the real issue is being able to write a 300 page book in a totally styles based way, and have it come out perfectly. Also, why divert developer effort to OSX and Windows, when those OS's have perfectly good book writing software already. First of all, wouldn't LyX already work with (BSD based) OSX? As far as Windows users, if they really want LyX, they can grab an old machine, slam Knoppix on it, and be running LyX tonight. I'd prioritize creating an even better 'NIX LyX over making a Windows version. I might as well also state my "pet plusses" about LyX: 1. I've found nothing else remotely comparable for creating a professional looking 300 page book (yes, I know I just contradicted my pet peeve #3 :). 2. LyX native format is entirely text, so I can parse it with Perl, tweak it in VI, and generally have my way with it. I've created an outline to LyX converter so I can outline a book in VimOutliner and then convert it to a LyX Part/Chapter/Section/Subsection/Subsubsection/Paragraph/subparagraph tree, suitable for filling in. This simple text parsability is a HUGE advantage over MS Word, which is binary, or OpenOffice, which is a .tgz composed of several files. IMHO LyX is simpler to parse even than XML. HTH SteveT Steve Litt Author: * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist Webmaster * Troubleshooters.Com * http://www.troubleshooters.com
