Hello, I'm mostly interested in just using LyX to write stuff... I learn a
few things about how to do something fancy and keep a copy of something it
worked in so that I'll have a chance of duplicating it again someday.
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If it matters: I'm a ‘multi-boot’, ‘multi-Linux Distro’ user. And
I use whichever version of LyX is available from the repository of
whichever Linux system I'm currently using. At the moment that includes:
LyX 2.0.0 (April 29 2011) on PCLinuxOS
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Actually I think LyX comes with impressive documentation. But when I half
remember something that I don't do very often it can take forever for me to
figure out where to find it again... And then there are the things that
change from one version to the next... I have a shell script that uses the
command line to open a half dozen related documents. I used to just know
that the one I work with the most could be indexed with ‘<alt>+V2’. Then
not so long ago the list evidently started loading in the revers order 
so that became ‘<alt>+V5’... Now with the upgrade to LyX 2.0.0 that
I just got on PCLinuxOS the numbered list now starts with zero rather than
one, so now I've got to use ‘<alt>+V4’...

That is however not an issue, just an example of how the user interface can
feel like a moving target. Of more concern however is the spellchecker...

1) keyboard shortcuts: I remember that I had a little trouble remembering that
the shortcut to Add a word to the dictionary was the ‘D’ rather than the ‘A’.
And that I used to be frustrated that I couldn't use the keyboard (without
also having to use the {expletive-deleted} mouse) to accept anything but the
default first choice in the list of suggestions.

Then it seamed like somebody was listening because the newer versions of
LyX that started working their way into the assorted repositories of the
various Linux distributions I used, started using the ‘A’ for the Add
function and a suGgestion list picked up the ‘G’ (Though that had a minor
conflict with another button that one had to keep an eye on. But if the
other ‘G’ was selected I only needed to type another ‘<alt>+G’ to get the
one I wanted and then an enter key would activate it. Now with this version
2.0.0 the conflict for the ‘G’ was eliminated by assigning the ‘U’ to the
‘sUggestion’ list. Which I don't mind so much as I do the fact that the
‘A’ has been reassigned to the ‘replace All’ button and the the ‘D’ has
again been dumped on the 'add’ button. I mean the ‘All’ part of the
‘replace all’ function name isn't even unique. It just as easily congers up
the ‘ignore All’ function to me... «sigh» Worse still the ‘D’ in ‘aDd’ is
in conflict with the ‘D’ in the ‘Document’ pull down menu, resulting in
having to resort to the mouse if I want to ADD a word to the dictionary.


2) pop up vs sidebar: I think this was probably the solution to the issue
that the old pop up wasn't smart enough not to hide the hi-lighted word and
it's immediate context when it opened. And I'll admit that as much as I
totally loath all sidebars «I like  my entire window width to always be
reserved for the primary text window of anything I'm editing/reading...»
Even a pop-up side bar is a better idea than blocking the view of the
word's context... Or at least it would be if:

3) closing spell checker via keyboard «getting it completely out of sight»:
It used to be that when I was done with spell check I could dismiss it
with the escape key. Now escape only returns the focus to the editing window, 
while the spellchecker sidebar stays open. This is worse than those
distracting squiggly underlines that some programs insist on putting under
unrecognized words. I don't like those because they distract me from the
natural flow of my writing. (I spell check after I'm done trying to think
of what to say...) But a side bar that won't go away without making me
wrestle with that {many imaginative expletives deleted} rodent pointing
device to click on an {minor expletive deleted} excruciatingly small “X”
button REALLY stops me from thinking creatively about what I'm trying to
write.

4) adding hyphenated words to the dictionary: This no longer works properly.
In a story I'm writing there is a vessel named the Avant-garde, It's name
was added to the dictionary to make sure I spelled it consistently. Now it
doesn't recognize it. And adding it again (with the durned mouse «sigh»)
doesn't help...

5) checking errors in order of occurrence: I'm not sure that this one wasn't
a fluke, because even though it did this several times, the next time I
opened LyX and tried to duplicate this, it didn't happen. But I sometimes
leave words that are not found in the dictionary in place intentionally.
This is what the ‘ignore’ button is for... But some other place in the
document the non-standard spelling might not be desired. I use a spell
checking place marker text “++ 'begin/end spell here' ++” with ‘'’
characters attached to the words “begin” & “here” to ensure that the spell
checker stops on the marker text at the end of the section of text I'm
spell checking. I found it very disturbing that when I used ‘<alt>+U’ to
select an alternate item from the suggestion list, and hit enter the spell
checker skipped forward to the next place with the same misspelled word
completely skipping over other spelling errors including my marker text so
that it was checking a different part of the document than I had ‘marked’
for spell checking...

-- 
|    ^^^   ^^^
|    <o>   <o>       Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|        ^   `            J(tWdy)P
|       ___          <<jtw...@ttlc.net>>
|      '   `

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