Rich, I read nothing in Mr. Gonzalez' suggestion that would require that you or anyone else "come down to that level." Adding the ability to create a layout from the LyX GUI does not mean that you would lose any ability for you to "roll your own." It might, though, encourage new users to get going more quickly--and some of them will be interested enough to learn how to dig deeper and get the additional power that comes from mastering the nuts and bolts.
I am by no means a completely "clueless newby"--yet I am new to LyX and to LaTeX. Thus, I am in the earlier parts of the learning curve. I believe that some ability to more easily operate from the LyX interface to create or modify layouts would be a boon to faster productivity. For example, I am now working on a document that should be a great help in getting my next job. I am doing it in LyX simply to have something that will cause me to continue to dig in and expand my familiarity that much faster. However, dealing with little things that should be easy to find is taking far longer than writing the document itself. I can see that as I become more familiar with things, my writing time should decline greatly, even compared to all the word processors I am familiar with (which includes most of the ones you have heard of over the past twenty years or so--part of my consulting work over the years has included evaluation of software and hardware tools for businesses and organizations of all sorts). My work has led me to believe that the word processing paradigm is wrong for those actually interested in productivity with a high-quality end result. When I have done technical writing assignments, I have learned firsthand how many people screw up their documents by not learning to use styles intelligently--leading to major problems in doing version upgrades of documentation. In my view, therefore, the LyX approach would enforce a more sensible practice, making future revisions that much easier to deal with. That is, in fact, why I began this process. That said, there are some fairly obvious things that could make life easier for everyone--and Mr.Gonzalez' suggestion is a very major one. That anyone might resent the idea of making things easier for the new or casual user is unfortunate. However, this is a large reason that LyX has not taken off far more than it has. David On 5/23/06, Rich Shepard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, 23 May 2006, Enrique S Gonzalez Di Totto wrote: > I know adding such a feature must be quite a large undertaking, but writing > .layout files or even one single line of LaTeX code is too steep a learning > curve for the average Word user to ever climb. Then, perhaps, the average Word user should stick to that and not make any attempts to learn LaTeX, or even LyX. For those with learning disabilities, stick to what's available in shrink-wrapped packages for the Microsoft environment. Don't suggest that the rest of us come down to that level. Rich
