I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with
LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking
etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues
to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
changes are not as good.
I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
despite the fact that the publisher (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of
Biogeography....)
For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've
been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored
manuscripts whenever I can. I also think that the ability to embed R
code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world
for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to
see developed further.
If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to
hear them.
Many thanks,
Denné
Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Anthropology
1 University Station C3200
Austin TX 78712
phone: (512) 471-7529
fax: (512) 471-6535
web: http://webspace.utexas.edu/dnr266/www
On Jul 30, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Paul A. Rubin wrote:
FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's
not a letter, then it's a job for LyX. The only reason I don't use
LyX for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in
both the top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX
class that would accommodate both. So I keep a rusty copy of
WordPerfect around for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).
I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in
both Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point. Most of the
time in LyX I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a
syllabus, but I've moved my CV to LyX as well.
IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations,
particularly if you're putting in math.
My $0.02 (0.000000001 euros at current conversion rates).
/Paul
