Dear list, I can not help having one or two words about lyx. Please forgive me if they seem to be in random order.
Firstly, I am a graduate student in statistics and lyx is the best writing tool (I was a long time user of word, scientific workplace, latex) I can find. I use lyx everyday, for almost everything (even for slides without lots of pictures). I have successfully converted many of my friends from word/latex to lyx and they are also satisfied. Opinions: 1. character and paragraph styling: not a problem for me. I use latex just because I do not want to deal with character and paragraph styling. I have of course no objection on any improvement in this area. 2. front-end. I dislike xform. Qt is must better. If Qt is widely available, I would suggest getting rid of xform completely. 3. latex conversion: critical to the usability of lyx. I was frustrated when I can not import a lyx-exported latex file that has been slightly modified by my advisor. I am glad that it will get better in 1.4. 4. windows and mac support would be good. It would be best if I can use the same editing tool under windows and linux. As a matter of fact, some of my friends use lyx under windows. 5. feature request: A short cut editing tool like what in KDE configuration? The ability to define shortcuts is the most useful feature of lyx to me, but not all users know \bindkey. 6. auto-configure (windows). I never used lyx-win but my friend installed lyx on windows and got frustrated since he could not do anything. I checked his installation and found that he needed to set pathes to all tools. (acrobad reader, xdvi, gv etc) 7. latex syntax error: I know it is very difficult to achieve but I still hope: for whatever user can input through GUI, there should be no latex error. (I am referring to ams math stuff being used in non-ams article.) 8. file format: I also sometimes modify lyx file directly using perl but lyx format is not very easy to handle. I would prefer a XML like format. 9. Change tracking: (I know there is a patch for this and I am not sure if lyx 1.4 will have it). This is the only reason I still use word (sometimes lyx->tex->word->send out for revision->word->tex->lyx.) 10. I recently encounter a small problem: if I modify file structure, I will sometimes have to remove table of content and reinsert it to make lyx compile. (I can submit a bug if this is not known). 11. auto-completion, auto-correction: not-so-useful features but some people may like them. (I hate word when it change my i to I ). 12. I do not know if this is possible. When I edit slides with lyx, I have to update pdf file a million times to see the output layout. Is it possible to preview a single page or at least tell me if my texts/figure exceed one page? Finally, I would like to thank Lyx developers for their wonderful work. I was once tempted to help but my thesis is taking all my time. Currently, converting word people to lyx is all I can do for lyx. Happy new year to everyone. Bo.
