Sat, 17 Aug 2013, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com wrote:
I'm interested in knowing what users of LyX think of the idea of using it as a general word processor, instead of MS Word, Libre Office, Apple's Pages, etc.
Minuses: Much more difficult to create/change paragraph styles and character styles than in MSWord or LibreOffice.
Ah! Not all of us want to tweak paragraphs, characters, or other aspects of the page. :-) I do approximately 97% of my writing with LyX, about 2.5% with emacs, and the rest with LibreOffice Writer because I need to translate from M$ Word or provide something to a client or regulator in that format. Many years ago I decided on the text and section head typefaces and the KOMA-Script flavors for articles, reports, letters, and my book (which went to Springer as the family of LaTeX files). I also use the beamer class for all presentation visuals. There are several benefits to using LyX (rather than LaTeX in emacs): - I focus on the content because professional typographers determined the page layout and other aspects of the document's physical appearance for me. - It is much easier to move around since I use the same keyboard shortcuts for LyX, emacs, joe, and other editing tasks that I learned with WordStar in the early 1980s (and LO Writer drives me nuts because it does not do what I expect and I won't waste the time to futz with it since I use it so little). - The typeset document is subtly different from the line-formatted processed word output. I suppose those of us who write with LaTeX/LyX readily see the difference while those in the M$ world are not consciously aware of the differences but they respond positively to them. It looks professional, like a book or other typeset document and not like a processed word document. - Math equations, tables, and presentations are easier to prepare and look much more professional than the output from alternatives. There are many differences between the way a word processor formats text and the way TeX formats text. The former is line-oriented (which is why you see large spaces between words) while the latter is paragraph oriented. Few word processed documents are hyphenated because it's not a default and the overwhelming majority of M$ Word users I know never change a default ... any default. That's my $2's worth (inflation, you know). Rich -- Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Have knowledge, will travel. Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
