Since Uwe moved this to users, I'll forward my comments here as well.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Word processor bashing
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:06:13 -0500
From: RGH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Patrick Camilleri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]@ovgu.de>
Patrick Camilleri wrote:
Dear Sir,
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. Styles have been supported, at least in Word,
since quite some time and not just in ‘most recent versions’ as quoted in
the footnote on page 2. I already remember using Styles in Word 97 and
frankly I can’t imagine anybody writing anything longer than 4 pages without
having any concept of Styles. You would go crazy!
I'd have to go back and look at the Intro to see precisely what it says,
so I won't defend it (yet). But I will take exception to this last
claim. I know a lot of people who use Word, etc, and I don't know a
single person who regularly uses styles. Students and colleagues send me
papers written in Word all the time, and I'm struggling to remember a
single time any one of them sent me one that used styles. So, yes,
certainly styles exist in Word, et al, but those tools do not encourage,
let alone enforce, the use of such styles, and that is an important
difference between LyX and standard word processors: LyX is style-based,
from the ground up, not a finger-painting tool with styles grafted onto
it. That's why learning to use LyX, even to write a letter, is such a
big adjustment for people. Speaking as a teacher, I often worry that my
students are themselves much too worried about formatting even while
they are writing first drafts, and this is in large part because WYSIWYG
tools present writing and formatting as one thing and not as two.
For what it's worth, I do use OpenOffice Writer for some things, but
these are mostly DTP type applications, such as a church bulletin or a
news letter, and I'd probably be better off using Scribus (say) if I
only I weren't too lazy to learn how to use it. (Yesterday, I used OOo
to make a table comparing prices at different grocery stores. I guess it
was good for that, too. But that's really killing a gnat with a nuke.)
OOo is fine for dashing off quick letters, too. But really, I'd hate to
have to go back to writing real papers in such a thing, and that's even
true when I'm not using math, in large part because...
So in my opinion this isn’t really one of the strong points of LaTeX. Rather I
find the ability of being able to typeset mathematical equations as being one
of the strongest points of LaTeX, together with being able to seamlessly insert
bibliographies and cross-references.
of how good the reference support is. The bibliography support in LyX
is, in my view, every bit as good and probably better than what's
commercially available. The only downside to what's freely available is
that it is still too hard to write your own reference format. But
BibLaTeX will go a good distance toward resolving that. Maybe so much so
that some kind of GUI can even be imagined.
This comment is more directed to LaTeX advocates rather than LyX since LyX
helps alleviate this problem. 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'm not sure who was saying that. Not us, as you say. The point of LaTeX
is surely NOT that it lets you concentrate on writing.
rh
