I'm moving this discussion to the users list: Patrick Camilleri wrote:
Though I find LaTeX + LyX to be a very good typesetting system, I don’t understand all this bashing at other word processors in your ‘Introduction to LyX’ document. In my opinion if one took at least ¼ the amount of time one needed to learn LaTeX, one would find out that modern Word Processors are indeed very capable tools.
My experience is that you need the same time to learn Word and LyX. Many people are using Word and don't known how it works. I get from students lots of documents where they aren't even able to typeset a caption for an image. Some also pretends that Word cannot typeset formulas. But of course Word can do all these things.
What we write in our Intro manual, is a teaser for new users. Someone who really knows Word won't use LyX because he can do everything also with Word. (OK, that Word fails with large documents like books and has problems with footnotes and bibliographies is another point.)
I really don’t understand all these people saying that LaTeX is a far superior system because it lets you concentrate on your writing. I can’t understand how an article full of markup lets you concentrate on your writing rather than on the details! It’s like saying I prefer writing my papers and publications in html rather than using a simple word processor since I don’t have to worry about the layout.
But that's why LyX was created. The Intro is talking about LyX not LaTeX as "superior" system, because it lets you use LaTeX as easily as you use other wordprocessors like Word.
regards Uwe
