Hi Richard Heck and Rich Shepard and everyone, In my original post I meant to say a lot of the surprises were TeX/LaTeX in nature, not under LyX's control. Nevertheless, to a newbie, they're all LyX problems.
The other thing I forgot to say is the problem is the surprise, not the behavior. Most LyX behaviors are reasonable, as long as the user expects them. I've responded in the following: On Monday 25 February 2008 11:49, you wrote: > Steve Litt wrote: > > You know what would be good documentation? "The 25 Biggest Surprises in > > LyX and How to Work With Them". > > Sounds like an excellent thing for the wiki. As I'll note, it might be > worth distinguishing here between LyX surprises---things we could > fix---and LaTeX's own idiosyncracies---things we can't fix. Could somebody please put the Wiki Stub in the proper place and post its location on the list? Then the rest of us can write the documentation. As far as distinquishing LyX as opposed to LaTeX/TeX, definitely. I meant to bring that up. Also, there's not necessarily anything to fix but the documentation. The behavior isn't the bad thing, the surprise is the problem. Once we documement, for instance, the need for units on all lengths, it's no longer surprising, and it's a good thing. > > > It's basically a FAQ with potential landmines and > > how to avoid/workaround them. > > > > I'll start out with the ones I know of: > > > > * Must hit Enter to declare column widths in tables > > * Must use units on all lengths > > This is LaTeX's requirement. I suppose LyX could have a default unit, > but that would probably be a worse surprise. I'd cry if you changed the current behavior. The thing is to prepare the newbie for this using documentation. > > > * Must delete/recreate source tree to compile after config failure > > Sometimes. We should document when, or else to be on the safe side just say do it (because it takes only a minute and can save hours of troubleshooting). SteveT Steve Litt Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware http://www.troubleshooters.com/
