On Monday 19 June 2006 09:21 am, Jeremy Wells wrote: > For some time I have been evaluating Lyx as an academic word processor, but > find it wanting in a few critical areas. > > For instance, the stated goal of Lyx is to spend more time writing, but > less time on formatting. Based on my experience, however, and from posts to > this list, a great deal of time is spent inserting LaTeX tags into > documents. In fact, my assessment is that more time is spent making Lyx > work properly than is spent in dealing with a traditional word-processing > environment, be it MS Word or OpenOffice. Moreover, a significant time > investment is required to research the format of the tag and where to > insert it, and then to debug the results. How does this save time?
Hi Jeremy, I feel your pain. I'd dump LyX in a minute if it didn't produce such darned good, perfectly typeset output, and if it weren't so easy to slam out content with LyX. Note I said it was easy to *slam out content*, not to make or modify environments (paragraph styles). In my estimation, creating a new style is between 5 and 50 times harder with LyX than it would be with Wordperfect or MS Word, and between 2 and 20 times harder than with Openoffice. It's frustrating. What I recommend you do is this... As you write and discover that you need a new environment (paragraph style), go into your layout file and make the environment, but just make it bare bones so you can use it in the document. Then, on occasion, take off your content authoring hat and put on your LyX/LaTeX expert hat, and make all your new bare bones paragraph styles exactly what you want. That's what I tend to do. Fully coding each environment as it comes up makes you forget the stream of thought of your content. As a rule, I don't see LyX as a timesaver when compared to wordprocessors. I see it simply as something that produces more pleasing and more professional output. > > Is the eventual goal of Lyx to "GUIfy" more of the LaTeX backend to avoid > having to delve into adding tags? I think LyX has already GUIfied LaTeX, and in doing so made the actual authoring of content (as opposed to creating or modifying styles) very fast. > Or will this tool remain relatively > marginalized, only used by those willing to undertake the significant time > overhead needed to actually do productive work? That's a loaded question. Consider the author whose boss or company hands him a fully functional LyX layout file, telling him only to use the styles contained therein. Such an author will find LyX trivially easy, and will brag to the heavens about how quick, easy and high quality LyX is. The same is true for the author who is satisfied with his document class's default styles, and I've known many such people. It's only people like you and me (and many others on this list) who need their documents to look different from the document class defaults, or who need additional envrionments, who would consider LyX difficult. > > Judging from the number of posts to this lists, citations and > bibliographies are a major issue. There is no easy to use method (e.g., a > GUI) that can define the options for natbib, jurabib, or any number of > bibliography styles. Most importantly, customizing these styles again > requires one to write more code, yet again, instead of engaging in the > writing process. > > I suppose what I'm hoping for is someone to say 1) "no, you're wrong, > because..."; 2) "wait x number of years and we'll be there"; or 3) "if you > don't like coding, use a different tool." You're not wrong, but as I mention, LyX isn't as hard as you think either. In my opinion, the day LyX finds a way to reread a document's layout files without closing and reopening the document or requiring the user to request Edit->Reconfigure, LyX environment and layout creation/modification will become MUCH easier, as modify/compile/test cycles go from 1 minute and almost 10 mouse clicks to as little as one keypress of Ctrl+T, which compiles to postscript, and if you're in debug mode or coding mode or whatever they call the mode that would eliminate Edit->Configure and restarting the session. > > This whole thing is extremely frustrating as I can see the huge promise > that the LaTeX/Lyx system can offer, but it's awfully rough beneath the > surface. LaTeX is powerful and produces beautiful output, but that comes at the price of ease. LaTeX isn't easy. I had to buy a book and become familiar with LaTeX before LyX stopped being painful. When I write letters, or documents less than 20 pages, I use Openoffice. But I author and sell books, and the output of LyX is so good that in my opinion my books can't be discerned from those of a major publisher if it weren't for my self-designed covers and my staple binding method. Like I say, I feel your pain. All I can tell you is that right now I'm authoring my third LyX created book. You might find some of my LyX writings helpful, because they were made in the same mindstate you appear to be in right now. Here's a page that links to all my LyX writings: * http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/linux/lyx/index.htm HTH 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
