Quoting Alexander Bl�m <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> hello,
>
> I am still a convinced LyX user and I've "infected" a few people around
> me to use it aswell. My girlfriend uses it for all kinds of documents
> now and gets good grades for homework (the professor likes the the
> layout - hehe).
> But I've also met a few very stubborn people, like most of my school.
> They say that you can solve any problem you're approaching with
> WORD2000...
> I'm running out of arguments.. They've not even tried LyX and knock it
> already. Any good arguments why one should use LyX instead of word?
>
Its basically true that anything (or at least most things) you can do with LyX
you can also do with word. Usually also vise-versa. The question is of course
how much work do you need to put into it.
With LyX (and latex) you need to learn how to give up control in the standard
case over formating in exchange for much better output for much less work/
Consistent styles, references, math (without mathtype for word), equation
numbering, indexes, footnotes, side notes etc. are much easier to do with LyX.
For actually the main strength is the ability to incorporate external styles
very easily (usually just change the document type). For example you can take a
report, change the document style to beamer and you have a slide show (not very
preaty of course but still a slide-show). This is especially good when you
start sending articles for publication and you can just include the document
class provided by the publisher (conference/journal) and you are mostly done
(if you are consistent with styles in word this is also ok, but still much
harder when it comes down to margines, number of columns and even worse,
reference styles).
Try to copy something from one document to another in word and keep a consistent
appearance or to reproduce and appearance from one document to another. Nearly
impossible (and you need to proof read the whole thing to make sure word hasn't
ruined things in the process).
On the other hand, if you want to do non-standard things with LyX it can be a
real head ache, since you need to start learning a programing language that
isn't very clear and usually poorly documented (I am talking about latex here
of course). At this point you also need to start handling compilation errors.
You can counter this also, but LyX is good at outputting different formats,
depending on the latex support. dvi/ps/pdf are easy, but you can convert most
stuff to html, rtf, man page, info page, docbook, formated text etc. Also the
file format is text and not propriatry so its easier to do version control
(although highlight changes is still a problem I will be happy to see
implemented, using diff/cvs/svn or any other method).
About the output you can always export word to html of course (very proprietary
and inefficient, but probably this doesn't matter to word people), ps using a
virtual postscript printer and pdf using acrobat (rather expansive).
Another point in LyX's favor is that the whole thing is free ;-) (LyX, latex,
the whole shebang)
> --
> Cheers,
> Alex
>
> shakespeare:
> /(bb|[^b]{2})/
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
> at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
>
LyXor word), equation numbering, indexes, footnotes, side notes etc. are much
easier to do with LyX. For actually the main strength is the ability to
incorporate external styles very easily (usually just change the document
type). For example you can take a report, change the document style to beamer
and you have a slide show (not very preaty of course but still a slide-show).
This is especially good when you start sending articles for publication and you
can just include the document class provided by the publisher
(conference/journal) and you are mostly done (if you are consistent with styles
in word this is also ok, but still much harder when it comes down to margines,
number of columns and even worse, reference styles).
Try to copy something from one document to another in word and keep a consistent
appearance or to reproduce and appearance from one document to another. Nearly
impossible (and you need to proof read the whole thing to make sure word hasn't
ruined things in the process).
On the other hand, if you want to do non-standard things with LyX it can be a
real head ache, since you need to start learning a programing language that
isn't very clear and usually poorly documented (I am talking about latex here
of course). At this point you also need to start handling compilation errors.
You can counter this also, but LyX is good at outputting different formats,
depending on the latex support. dvi/ps/pdf are easy, but you can convert most
stuff to html, rtf, man page, info page, docbook, formated text etc. Also the
file format is text and not proprietary so its easier to do version control
(although highlight changes is still a problem I will be happy to see
implemented, using diff/cvs/svn or any other method).
About the output you can always export word to html of course (very proprietary
and inefficient, but probably this doesn't matter to word people), ps using a
virtual postscript printer and pdf using acrobat (rather expansive).
Another point in LyX's favor is that the whole thing is free ;-) (LyX, latex,
the whole shebang)
> --
> Cheers,
> Alex
>
> shakespeare:
> /(bb|[^b]{2})/
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
> at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
>
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