I do not think that drag-and-drop is a good reason to switch to LyX. You will suffer if you're the type that loves writing all the LaTeX yourself. I'm sorry that you're using it "out of necessity". I've had to use software out of necessity before and it is a horrible feeling.
You clearly want to customize things and in LyX there is a lot of room for this. Take a read of Help > Customization. You can create your own inset that will put stuff in the preamble (so it would be inside of the document instead of going to Document > Settings). For this do a search for the word "InPreamble" in Help > Customization. That manual will also show you how to change the color of ERT. One way to do this is to put the following in Document > Settings > Local Layout: InsetLayout ERT LabelString ERT LatexType none Decoration minimalistic Font Family typewriter EndFont LabelFont Color latex Size Small EndFont MultiPar true CustomPars false ForcePlain true PassThru true ParbreakIsNewline true KeepEmpty true FreeSpacing true ForceLTR true End For more permanent ways, read the Customization manual. To preview your custom LaTeX, put it in a preview box (Insert > Preview). Feedback is appreciated, but please be specific (e.g. with proposed solutions not "it's ugly") and send patches; and be open to the possibility that others don't like things the way you do. Although I don't think it will happen, I really hope that you end up falling in love with LyX and staying around the list to offer suggestions. I really think that LyX has a lot to offer power LaTeX users and this side is not often seen. Scott On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Ingar Pareliussen <[email protected]> wrote: > I think you'll never be satisfied with LyX if you try to shoehorn LyX into > something it is not, a LaTeX-editor. > > You are right that most what is written about LyX is not written for people > coming from LaTeX, this might be a shortcoming from the LyX community. But I > guess the most important is that understand that LyX is not meant to write > LaTeX, but documents. For one coming from LaTeX the biggest change moving to > LyX would be the removal of the LaTeX markup from the document. The reason of > removing the markup is to read and write the text more quickly, even math. If > you find writing the markup and reading/writing the document a non-issue you > should get a LaTeX editor, there are plenty. Even online: > https://www.writelatex.com/ > > However, if you want to try LyX as a document processor here is some thought > from your experience: > > The preamble is a bit tucked away, but usually you only change it initially, > when you have set it up you make a template of the document and use that when > you start a new document. > > If you have a lot of beamer macroes there is several ways to integrate those > into LyX. you could make a layout-file that magically incorporates the macros > into the preamble and give you the macros along with the rest of the > beamermacros in the gui. Or you could make a template and add the macros in > the preamble and use ERT to access it (however, as you remarked this will > stand out from the rest of the document, as it is only meant as a last > resort), or you could add them as local styles connected to the document, but > integrated into the menus. What to chose is down to the type of macros, I > guess. It is all about the best way of hiding the markup away. > > Ingar Pareliussen
