Re: How would LyX perform?
On 12/30/2021 8:46 AM, Steve Litt via lyx-users wrote:
Wolfgang Engelmann via lyx-users said on Mon, 27 Dec 2021 11:31:55 +0100
This has shocked me
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115069
Would be interesting to see how LyX performs
My first two books were written in WordPerfect 5.1. The next one was
written in MS Word. All the rest were written in LyX. I was happy with
all of them.
My worst nightmare would be authoring in raw LaTeX. By the time I
remembered the necessary LaTeX tag, I would have forgotten the point I
was trying to make in my writing.
LaTeX is a *lousy* native format for a document. It's suitable only for
fixed line PDF/paper. It's extremely difficult to convert to flowing
text HTML or ePub, unless you want to (urk) use Pandoc, with all the
implied compromises on appearance. In my opinion LaTeX should be only
an intermediate component in the authoring stack, that component being
for creating fixed-line PDF/paper.
Plain TeX would be much better than LaTeX, as a native format, if it
could handle fonts well. Does anyone know of a Plain TeX to LuaTeX or
XeTeX converter?
I'm working on an authoring tool whose native format is a Markdown
superset, with complete support of arbitrary styles. It's pretty easy
to go from that format to HTML or ePub, but to go from there to
fixed-line PDF/paper without using (urk) Pandoc is a challenge. But not
nearly as big of a challenge as going from LaTeX to semantic HTML.
Getting back to LyX, one of my books, "Key to Everyday Excellence",
could not have been written in WordPerfect or MSWord because the
(fictional) plot is so date driven that the current plot date appears
in the header. And although I used styles-based authoring in
WordPerfect and MSWord, I like that LyX enforces styles-based
authoring. LyX is quite a fast authoring environment --- the only way
it could be faster is to get rid of mouse usage.
In my opinion, for a document over 10K words, LyX beats the authoring
speed and ease of MSWord.
This discussion wouldn't be complete without including LibreOffice.
LibreOffice is a style-losing piece of junk fit only for
fingerpainting. Those who characterize LibreOffice as a substitute for
MSWord either don't use styles-based authoring, or they're fooling
themselves, or they know something I don't know.
By the way, my new book, "Making Mental Models: Advanced Edition", just
came out yesterday. It's made almost exclusively with LyX, Inkscape,
and shellscripts. A big thank you goes out to the LyX team who made
this possible.
SteveT
Steve,
I always enjoy reading about your experiences with various document
production systems, in part because I can relate to so much of it. While
I haven't written books, in my former profession as a trial and
appellate lawyer, I wrote countless legal briefs and documents. Most
legal briefs run about 30 pages or so and share much of the formatting
as books; a cover page, front matter with table of contents and a table
of authorities and main matter with section headings, formatted text
with headers, footers and footnotes. When presenting a brief in the U.S.
Supreme Court, one presents it in the format of a paper-back book. The
lawyer prepares the fully formatted document and then sends it to
specialized legal publishers for final printing. In my case, I used
WordPerfect for Windows as that is what my publisher preferred at the time.
I am old enough that I began with DOS and PC-Write. I graduated to
WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, then WP for Windows and later to Word. Finally,
because I am cheap and actually read and try to abide by software
license agreements, I downloaded StarOffice and have used it along with
its various subsequent descendants including OpenOffice.org and now
LibreOffice 7.x. I am sorry that you have had bad experiences with
LibreOffice as I have always found it to be quite faithful and every bit
as easy to use as MS-Word. In my years of use, I have never had it lose
or mangle my styles. I don't think I'm fooling myself and I definitely
use styles-based authoring, and I can tell I certainly don't know any
more than you. It just works and, I often find that, when I try other
systems, including LyX, LaTeX or an HTML oriented RMarkdown, I go back
to LibreOffice to just get work done.
I agree with your assessment about LaTeX and LyX. When writing in LaTeX,
I also get distracted by the many times I have to type \command{text}.
When I found LyX, I was thrilled to see it shield me from so much LaTeX
coding. I can even type a dollar sign in LyX ($) without having to
remember to precede it with with a backslash to avoid slipping into math
mode. I can't imagine trying to write a book in LaTeX code. But, I
wouldn't hesitate to use LyX. I also agree it relies too much on the mouse.
I now teach at a local college and, for one of my classes, I wanted my
students to do a book report on Charles Sheldon's book, /In His Steps/.
Since it is an old
Re: How would LyX perform?
On 12/27/2021 9:15 AM, Jose Ramom Flores das Seixas via lyx-users wrote: Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) I just read into it a bit and see no reason to look into it further: * It only compares performance in short texts *only short texts*. However, TeX's strengths are in large papers. For example, one could have set the task of making changes in a dissertation: Move sections, make systematic formatting changes, create indexesIf one had measured the expertise in using a program not only in hours, but also the sensible use of the possibilities, other groupings might have resulted - even experienced Word users rarely use style sheets consistently, for example. * *Style importance.* Character styles for highlighting (as they are common e.g. in InDesign and as macros in TeX) do not exist at all... But it is very easy to construct tasks that favor one system or another. With TeX it depends also still on the editor and how humans know to use it. * The paper is already from 2014. *old paper! Lualatex. *Since then, most LaTeX users have probably gotten used to LuaTeX with Unicode and OpenType, so that many coding problems no longer apply (although they may not have played a major role here). * It would have been interesting to include LibreOffice and ConTeXt as well. Maybe also layout programs like InDesign, Affinity Publisher, Scribus (Is LibreOffice still more stable than Word for extensive work?). Hraban I'm no expert in empirical research methodology, but I've learned enough to know that one needs to minimize variables. It seems to me that, in this study, the variables included not only the different systems -- Word and LaTeX -- but also different *users* using the different programs. I have to believe that at least some of the differences in the results have to do with differences in user typing proficiency. Some typists make more spelling and grammatical mistakes than others regardless of what software they use. To validly test the *software*, I would think that one would need to have same user use both systems. That, of course, would be problematic as it would difficult to find a single use with equal proficiency with both Word and LaTeX. When testing LaTeX, a lot depends on the editing front-end one uses. I have to believe that a person using LyX would be more efficient than one using TeXWorks, if for no other reason that LyX shields the user from so much LaTeX source code. But, unless I missed it, I didn't see any mention in the study of any of the LaTeX users editing with LyX. As to formatting "errors," I wonder what qualified as an error. It appears to me that the test was to duplicate the visual formatting of the original documents. If the original document has a 14 point heading, is it an error if LaTeX produces a 14.3 point heading? Is it an error if the resulting document has 1.5 pica paragraph indents instead of 2.0 pica indents? Were formatting "errors" found in the tables if LaTeX automatically adjusted a table width rather than making it match the width of the original document? My obvious point is that, if formatting "errors" are determined on such a visual-matching level, then it could take quite a bit of time to tweak a LaTeX preamble to achieve the desired results. This isn't a knock on LaTeX; it is simply a recognition that one doesn't generally choose LaTeX for the purpose of precisely reproducing the visual formatting of another existing document. Rather, when I choose LaTeX, it is usually because I don't *care* about the level of formatting details apparently tested by this study. I leave that up to the document class; that's the beauty of LaTeX. If I were given the task of duplicating the visual formatting of an existing document, I would always choose a WYSIWYG program over LaTeX, not because it's better, but because it would be more useful for a visually oriented task. The Word users who could see the formatting as they worked would inherently have an advantage over the LaTeX users who would be working somewhat blindly until they compiled their documents. In short, I have serious questions about the validity of this test. Virgil-- lyx-users mailing list lyx-users@lists.lyx.org http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users
Re: Glitch (bug?) in 2.3.6.1 [FIXED]
On 12/15/2021 8:47 AM, Rich Shepard via lyx-users wrote: I don't know about others, but I'm a touch-typist (thanks to the Army decades ago) and I use a laptop-size keyboard with my desktops. That's one reason I prefer to type. And, while many moons ago I objected to the devs that I found nothing evil in typing LaTeX code in the document body so perhaps some other name than Evil Red Text would be appropriate, I learned to just ignore what ERT abbreiated and use it for my convenience. So, *that's* what ERT stands for. I had gathered that it referred to LaTeX code inserted into a LyX document, but I never knew how it got the initials ERT. Echoes of the recent discussion about MWE (it took me a while to figure out how an attached file would earn the acronym MWE). And, then there was my even-older brother-in-law, who always ended his emails with LOL (as in Lots of Love) until my wife asked him what he was always laughing about. Virgil -- lyx-users mailing list lyx-users@lists.lyx.org http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users
Re: Glitch (bug?) in 2.3.6.1 [FIXED]
On 12/15/2021 7:46 AM, Dr Eberhard Lisse via lyx-users wrote: Rich, Steve, that was a rhetorical question of course :-)-O I do however find that whenever I find myself using ERT I always try and look for a LyX way to do it, because I don't like ERT :-)-O I do the same, but I think that Rich makes a valid point about using the keyboard vs. the mouse. In my experience, there are many LyX functions for which it appears the only way to access them is through a mouse (or trackpad, etc.). I'm old enough to remember working with DOS and WordStar style keystroke combinations and I learned to fly on the keyboard. Even when learning GUIs in the early days of Windows, I always looked for keyboard shortcuts as I hated the interruption of taking my fingers off the home row and onto a mouse. This is especially true in a function like word processing that is heavy on typing. I'm always frustrated when I can't easily find a keyboard shortcut for a LyX function, so I can understand why someone might resort to ERT just to avoid interrupting the flow of the work. Virgil -- lyx-users mailing list lyx-users@lists.lyx.org http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users
Re: beamer metropolis fonts
On 12/1/2021 10:06 AM, Neal Becker wrote:
I've been using beamer with metropolis theme for some time now. The
recommended font here is Fira. I've used:
\setsansfont[
BoldFont={Fira Sans SemiBold},
ItalicFont={Fira Sans BookItalic},
BoldItalicFont={Fira Sans SemiBold Italic}
]{Fira Sans Book}
I found the semibold seems the most pleasing weight.
Then to try to get a good matching math font, I've tried adding:
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[mathrm=sym]{unicode-math}
\setmathfont{Fira Math}
\setoperatorfont\mathsf
This is not terrible, but the math still looks more bold than the text.
I wonder whether any of you use metropolis and what fonts you find work well?
There is some previous discussion here in which I participated:
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/403734/beamer-metropolis-theme-recommend-a-math-font-that-matches-with-fira
When I use metropolis, I pair it with Calibri, a Windows system font. My
needs are very simple and I don't need a specific math font. I find that
Calibri is pleasant when projected on a screen and it has a nice Italic
for a sans-serif font. Because it is a Windows font, I compile my
presentations with XeLaTeX.
Virgil
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