Hello everybody,
I wasn't exactly sure where to post this, so I thought I'd give it a try here instead of here: http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/FeaturePoll as it's more a suggestion.
I am currently working a lot with LyX on my diploma thesis, I've also edited a page on using Memoir in LyX where I note down some hints that I find out from time to time. Also, I started to convince a lot of people to try out LyX that took a look at LaTeX before but got scared (and to people from the humanities, LaTeX indeed is scary but LyX is acutally easier to use than Word as I always point out).
As a mac user I have a workflow that is similar to the GIMP or Photoshop, I have separate windows for each document (and sometimes tabs inside these documents) and I have the main controls outside of these windows. I don't like working fullscreen, as I often have many other small windows open with eg. my notes of books that I've read, BibTeX databases and so forth. Not working in fullscreen, I often can't access many of the controls in the document window directly, as they are “hidden”.
In LyX, when I move the controls out of the document window, they simply stay as they are. I would find it great and way more intuitive, if I could edit their position to make “menus” similar the ones you might know from the GIMP. Because now, the menu bars stretch all over my screen (which is ok, but the dottet lines look as if you could edit them but yet I haven't managed to do so). Also, I would like to detach the document outliner. And I would like the setup to stay as it was when I close and reopen LyX (ok, it only takes a few seconds). And if I could now have a window with eg. the LyX manuals opened in tabs and one window with all the tabs relevant for my work (just as in Firefox and many other browsers), it would be great.
But these are just some suggestions, I don't know anything about programming which is sad as I would really like to help in this great project (you know, in many boards or lists you get the idea that LyX is something like “LaTeX for idiots”. I though so too, for a while (as I was practically reading only propaganda against it) but meanwhile, having become more and more familiar with LaTeX and being able to even show it to other people I think that LyX actually is “LaTeX for the really smart ones” as you can do everything that you can do in LaTeX and most of it with the ease of two mouse-clicks instead of remembering commands by heart, typing them, looking for typing mistakes and running through your document several times to finally view it – well, how cool is that?). So maybe my suggestions are easy to implement, maybe not.
Anyway, keep going with this great work (I love to take looks at LyX 1.6 features and it seems that it will be another really big step forward) and if I ever earn some money I will thankfully donate :)
Kind regards from Vienna, Max ________________________________________________________ Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html for details.
