Steve,
I really can't see why you would want to reduce LaTeX or LyX to a
competitor to Word. They are designed for completely different
purposes and markets. I also take exception the concept of such a
comparison, just on the principle they were never intended to be
anything like one another.
Lets compare apples to apples here, LaTeX was written for technical
writing and by its very essence designed to remove the author from
creating style so the author could focus on the content. I,
personally, make no advocacy one way or the other, as it is stated in
both the mission statements of LyX and LaTeX that their goal is to
remove this component from those who have no idea what they are doing
and keep it firmly with those who do. The learning curve that is
involved in creating new styles is there for a reason, which is to
keep things clean and elegant and created only by those who have
taken the time to learn what it really takes to create beautiful
documents. I've been using LaTeX and LyX for years now, and I have
never found a situation where I couldn't use a little ERT or read the
existing documentation and get exactly what I want with an existing
style. LyX by itself is easy enough to learn that you don't need to
go around flippantly creating style files. We shouldn't be lowering
the learning curve for for those who don't want to learn how to do
things the right way, but should be actively engaged in teaching the
proper use and established methods for creating documents. This is
where Word went wrong, by making it too easy to change anything you
want, you generally get crap for a result. I just can't agree with
putting the effort into creating something that could open those kind
of doors.
I too have done self-publishing, but before I did I spent years
studying proper page layout and construction as a calligrapher. To
be blunt I've seen too much junk put out into the world by those who
thought that they knew what a "proper" page style and set up was to
agree with the implementation of this concept on any level.
I think that were we are disagreeing here is that you think the
fault lies exclusively with the software ( Openoffice, Word, etc.),
this is however not the case. The fault lies with the people, not
the software. When those without experience are give too much
control over the nuance of typesetting; the software, regardless of
its quality, is still going to produce a crappy document. I think
that we should be less interested in trying to automate that which
for the past (20+) has been left un-automated, and be more interested
in trying to get people to learn the right way to create beautiful
type. Think about it, they could have implemented this idea of yours
at anytime since LaTeX was written, the technology has always been
there. (Word has demonstrated this.) And yet, no one has done it.
Have you taken a second to ask why that is? As I was learning about
LaTeX, I found that the reasons I've been outlining are the exact
reason that this has never been implemented. Take a few minutes and
read the CTAN articles about how LaTeX and TeX came about. They
explain this very clearly, the average person (myself included)
should not be allowed to dictate document style without the proper
training and study.
Regards
Mike Anderson
