On Wednesday 14 June 2006 04:10 am, Ingo Klöcker wrote: I'm confining my comments to books and very long documents. I have few opinions on LyX for docs less than 10 pages -- personally I use OpenOffice for such short docs.
> I think you are completely missing the point what LyX and LaTeX is all > about. Just like with HTML in combination with CSS, LyX/LaTeX is mainly > concerned with the contents. Unless you are a typographer you shouldn't > have to worry about layouting a document. LyX/LaTeX will take care of > this i you choose the right document class. By definition, any self-publisher is a typographer unless he/she hires a typographer, and the economics of self-publishing usually foreclose the possibility of hiring a typographer. So, for self-publishers, the question becomes, "how difficult will it be for me to implement the styles necessary to make this book's appearance something that will sell". Unfortunately, creating new styles (environments) in LaTeX is very difficult, much more difficult than with OpenOffice and the like. However, as you point out later in this message, it would be very hard to give up the typography and hyphenation that LaTeX does for you. LyX makes things even better because when you're in the "pounding out content" mode, you needn't type in a single LaTeX command. > > If you want to do fancy stuff and want to have full control over the > layout than you either have to use a lot of LaTeX code in LyX (via ERT) > or you should use a word processor (like OpenOffice.org or MS Word) > which doesn't help you with layouting but forces you to do all the > layouting yourself (with the result of a much inferior layout to what > LyX/LaTeX would create). A third alternative, and I think the right alternative for the majority of a book, is to create a layout file that *consistently* implements the look you want throughout the document. That way, if you want to change the look of every story, you just modify the story environment in the layout file and recompile. If you had used ERT in every story, the changes would be voluminous and error prone. By using a layout file to consistently implement the exact look you want, you have both that *and* LaTeX's help in typesetting. > > > I think really I should just stick with Openoffice for writing. It is > > much simpler to use for actual writing and producing forms. Except, > > like I said, unless you want to do math formulae. > > Maybe for your special use case you are right. But in general you are > completely mistaken. LyX/LaTeX can be used to typeset any kinds of > documents. For example I write all my letters with LyX, because I never > have to worry about correct spacing or placement of address, date, etc. > LaTeX places everything at the correct spot (in my case following the > German norm for letters). For books, LyX/LaTeX gives you very nice spacing and a pleasing page that would be difficult with a word processor. The difference is subtle, but to the reader reading 100 pages a day, I believe LyX/LaTeX formatting would make reading less tiresome. The only problem I see with LyX/LaTeX is that it's *so darned hard* to implement your own environments. Another LyX benefit is that the LyX native format (at least in 1.3x) is a very simple and parsable format so that I can import, export and tweak with ease. Bottom line -- whenever someone says "you just write the content and let LyX format it", please remember that the self-publisher must control both content and look, hopefully without huge difficulty. SteveT Steve Litt Author: * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist * Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting * Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore http://www.troubleshooters.com/utp/tcourses.htm
