rgheck wrote: > Vincent van Ravesteijn wrote: >>> I guess he was just not aware that [showing page breaks] is actually >>> not feasible in LyX, as Richard G. Heck kindly explained. >>> >> What if it would be feasible ? Would it be an added value or is it too >> the-non-tex-way ? >> > I don't see the value myself. As I said before, in LaTeX (unlike in > Word) page breaks can change by the character, as paragraphs are > re-broken and floats are repositioned. I guess that makes me think that > it isn't even feasible---where do floats appear, vis-a-vis page breaks? > But even if it were, it encourages one to think in the wrong terms, at > least during the document-creation process.
I think even that statement might be a more-generous take on the matter than I would have. There are two ways a LaTeX editor could show page breaks: by guessing, which is likely to be inaccurate (so of little value), not to mention a huge amount of work; or by continually rerunning the toolchain (as with Instant Preview, but greatly aggravated), which is impractical and a waste of resources. More importantly, looking for formatting results such as the location of page breaks from LyX contradicts the entire design philosophy behind late-formatting document production toolchains. There are early-formatting toolchains (so-called WYSIWYG word processors) for those who want early formatting. TeX, LaTeX, and LyX are not designed that way. And, as Richard says, early formatting conflates content and presentation. There's a reason why the Greek rhetors put style and delivery in separate canons: we can only concentrate on so many details at once. As with most things, there are different benefits and costs to early and late rendering. Trying to make one tool do both is likely to produce something with the faults of each. That doesn't mean it's not useful to ask these questions, of course. Understanding why LyX doesn't show page breaks means understanding the principle of late rendering, and hopefully why it's valuable. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
