Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Helge Hafting]

On 14. feb. 2012 13:04, Eric Weir wrote:


On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

[...]

with TeX), or MS Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have
experienced that some of these journals and proceedings were in fact
produced with TeX in the end, but even then they have not accepted TeX
file as input from me, simply because the editors and reviewers don't
know how to deal with that format.


How do you deal with this?


I sent my editor/proofreader a PDF. She printed it and mailed back
the printed pages, with every change indicated in pen.

Basically, the oldfashioned way that works with everything: hand- and 
typewritten manuscripts, as well as stuff written in mysterious unknown 
software. :-)


Editors have a whole system of notation for this sort of work. Quick for 
them to write, and it is easy to understand without training. Slashes 
over stuff to remove, arrows for moving, alternative words/spelling in 
the margin . . .


Not having the editor edit my text directly was an advantage. Editors 
make mistakes too, especially when they don't know all the jargon. This 
way, I did not have to watch for such errors. I simply avoided them when 
implementing the changes, and told them why on the next iteration.


Helge Hafting

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:00:09 +0100
Helge Hafting helge.haft...@hist.no wrote:

 On 14. feb. 2012 13:04, Eric Weir wrote:
 
  On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
 [...]
  with TeX), or MS Word documents for journals and proceedings. I
  have experienced that some of these journals and proceedings were
  in fact produced with TeX in the end, but even then they have not
  accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because the editors and
  reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.
 
  How do you deal with this?
 
 I sent my editor/proofreader a PDF. She printed it and mailed back
 the printed pages, with every change indicated in pen.
 
 Basically, the oldfashioned way that works with everything: hand- and 
 typewritten manuscripts, as well as stuff written in mysterious
 unknown software. :-)
 
 Editors have a whole system of notation for this sort of work. Quick
 for them to write, and it is easy to understand without training.
 Slashes over stuff to remove, arrows for moving, alternative
 words/spelling in the margin . . .
 
 Not having the editor edit my text directly was an advantage. Editors 
 make mistakes too, especially when they don't know all the jargon.
 This way, I did not have to watch for such errors. I simply avoided
 them when implementing the changes, and told them why on the next
 iteration.
 
 Helge Hafting

Hi Helge,

There are two downsides to marking up paper in red ink:

1) The paper can get lost
2) No room for queries and responses
2) There is no historical record of queries, responses, and changes

#1 can be easily fixed by scanning, so it's no problem. #2 can be fixed
by referencing numbered queries, but it's a lot more work for the
editor and, depending on how much context the editor puts in, a little
or a lot more work for the writer. #3 could conceivably be fixed by
numbering the papers with red ink, but it's a poor solution.

The benefits you state for red ink on paper are certainly true, so it's
a tradeoff of benefits one must evaluate before deciding whether to go
red pen on paper.

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Helge Hafting]

On 14. feb. 2012 13:04, Eric Weir wrote:


On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

[...]

with TeX), or MS Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have
experienced that some of these journals and proceedings were in fact
produced with TeX in the end, but even then they have not accepted TeX
file as input from me, simply because the editors and reviewers don't
know how to deal with that format.


How do you deal with this?


I sent my editor/proofreader a PDF. She printed it and mailed back
the printed pages, with every change indicated in pen.

Basically, the oldfashioned way that works with everything: hand- and 
typewritten manuscripts, as well as stuff written in mysterious unknown 
software. :-)


Editors have a whole system of notation for this sort of work. Quick for 
them to write, and it is easy to understand without training. Slashes 
over stuff to remove, arrows for moving, alternative words/spelling in 
the margin . . .


Not having the editor edit my text directly was an advantage. Editors 
make mistakes too, especially when they don't know all the jargon. This 
way, I did not have to watch for such errors. I simply avoided them when 
implementing the changes, and told them why on the next iteration.


Helge Hafting

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:00:09 +0100
Helge Hafting helge.haft...@hist.no wrote:

 On 14. feb. 2012 13:04, Eric Weir wrote:
 
  On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
 [...]
  with TeX), or MS Word documents for journals and proceedings. I
  have experienced that some of these journals and proceedings were
  in fact produced with TeX in the end, but even then they have not
  accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because the editors and
  reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.
 
  How do you deal with this?
 
 I sent my editor/proofreader a PDF. She printed it and mailed back
 the printed pages, with every change indicated in pen.
 
 Basically, the oldfashioned way that works with everything: hand- and 
 typewritten manuscripts, as well as stuff written in mysterious
 unknown software. :-)
 
 Editors have a whole system of notation for this sort of work. Quick
 for them to write, and it is easy to understand without training.
 Slashes over stuff to remove, arrows for moving, alternative
 words/spelling in the margin . . .
 
 Not having the editor edit my text directly was an advantage. Editors 
 make mistakes too, especially when they don't know all the jargon.
 This way, I did not have to watch for such errors. I simply avoided
 them when implementing the changes, and told them why on the next
 iteration.
 
 Helge Hafting

Hi Helge,

There are two downsides to marking up paper in red ink:

1) The paper can get lost
2) No room for queries and responses
2) There is no historical record of queries, responses, and changes

#1 can be easily fixed by scanning, so it's no problem. #2 can be fixed
by referencing numbered queries, but it's a lot more work for the
editor and, depending on how much context the editor puts in, a little
or a lot more work for the writer. #3 could conceivably be fixed by
numbering the papers with red ink, but it's a poor solution.

The benefits you state for red ink on paper are certainly true, so it's
a tradeoff of benefits one must evaluate before deciding whether to go
red pen on paper.

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Helge Hafting]

On 14. feb. 2012 13:04, Eric Weir wrote:


On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

[...]

with TeX), or MS Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have
experienced that some of these journals and proceedings were in fact
produced with TeX in the end, but even then they have not accepted TeX
file as input from me, simply because the editors and reviewers don't
know how to deal with that format.


How do you deal with this?


I sent my editor/proofreader a PDF. She printed it and mailed back
the printed pages, with every change indicated in pen.

Basically, the oldfashioned way that works with everything: hand- and 
typewritten manuscripts, as well as stuff written in mysterious unknown 
software. :-)


Editors have a whole system of notation for this sort of work. Quick for 
them to write, and it is easy to understand without training. Slashes 
over stuff to remove, arrows for moving, alternative words/spelling in 
the margin . . .


Not having the editor edit my text directly was an advantage. Editors 
make mistakes too, especially when they don't know all the jargon. This 
way, I did not have to watch for such errors. I simply avoided them when 
implementing the changes, and told them why on the next iteration.


Helge Hafting

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:00:09 +0100
Helge Hafting  wrote:

> On 14. feb. 2012 13:04, Eric Weir wrote:
> >
> > On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
> [...]
> >> with TeX), or MS Word documents for journals and proceedings. I
> >> have experienced that some of these journals and proceedings were
> >> in fact produced with TeX in the end, but even then they have not
> >> accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because the editors and
> >> reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.
> >
> > How do you deal with this?
> 
> I sent my editor/proofreader a PDF. She printed it and mailed back
> the printed pages, with every change indicated in pen.
> 
> Basically, the oldfashioned way that works with everything: hand- and 
> typewritten manuscripts, as well as stuff written in mysterious
> unknown software. :-)
> 
> Editors have a whole system of notation for this sort of work. Quick
> for them to write, and it is easy to understand without training.
> Slashes over stuff to remove, arrows for moving, alternative
> words/spelling in the margin . . .
> 
> Not having the editor edit my text directly was an advantage. Editors 
> make mistakes too, especially when they don't know all the jargon.
> This way, I did not have to watch for such errors. I simply avoided
> them when implementing the changes, and told them why on the next
> iteration.
> 
> Helge Hafting

Hi Helge,

There are two downsides to marking up paper in red ink:

1) The paper can get lost
2) No room for queries and responses
2) There is no historical record of queries, responses, and changes

#1 can be easily fixed by scanning, so it's no problem. #2 can be fixed
by referencing numbered queries, but it's a lot more work for the
editor and, depending on how much context the editor puts in, a little
or a lot more work for the writer. #3 could conceivably be fixed by
numbering the papers with red ink, but it's a poor solution.

The benefits you state for red ink on paper are certainly true, so it's
a tradeoff of benefits one must evaluate before deciding whether to go
red pen on paper.

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Anthony Campbell]

On 13 Feb 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:

[snip] 
The typical beginner's mistake is to try to fine-tune everything at the
beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final
formatting can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
(When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's
guidelines. In most cases the publisher will do the final layout for
you, if you like this or not.)
 

When writing books that I am going to print/publish myself my policy is
to use a two-stage process. I write first in a text editor (vim) which
gives me maximum freedom to concentrate on the content my text without
bothering about how it will look. I then import it into LyX to prepare
it for printing. I still make content changes at this stage but the
basic material already exists.

AC


-- 
Anthony Campbell - a...@acampbell.org.uk 
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux 
http://www.acampbell.org.uk - sample my ebooks at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acampbell

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Anthony Campbell]

On 13 Feb 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:

[snip] 
The typical beginner's mistake is to try to fine-tune everything at the
beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final
formatting can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
(When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's
guidelines. In most cases the publisher will do the final layout for
you, if you like this or not.)
 

When writing books that I am going to print/publish myself my policy is
to use a two-stage process. I write first in a text editor (vim) which
gives me maximum freedom to concentrate on the content my text without
bothering about how it will look. I then import it into LyX to prepare
it for printing. I still make content changes at this stage but the
basic material already exists.

AC


-- 
Anthony Campbell - a...@acampbell.org.uk 
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux 
http://www.acampbell.org.uk - sample my ebooks at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acampbell

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Anthony Campbell]

On 13 Feb 2012, Uwe Stöhr wrote:

[snip] 
>The typical beginner's mistake is to try to fine-tune everything at the
>beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final
>formatting can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
>(When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's
>guidelines. In most cases the publisher will do the final layout for
>you, if you like this or not.)
> 

When writing books that I am going to print/publish myself my policy is
to use a two-stage process. I write first in a text editor (vim) which
gives me maximum freedom to concentrate on the content my text without
bothering about how it will look. I then import it into LyX to prepare
it for printing. I still make content changes at this stage but the
basic material already exists.

AC


-- 
Anthony Campbell - a...@acampbell.org.uk 
Microsoft-free zone - Using Debian GNU/Linux 
http://www.acampbell.org.uk - sample my ebooks at
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acampbell

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/16/2012 05:05 PM, Colin Williams wrote:
I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is 
some division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a 
book that scales many platforms. If latex is required, then it's my 
opinion that lyx itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing.


Knowledge of LaTeX is required only for customization of certain 
elements of the appearance of e.g. section headings, and then only if 
you are using a form of output that is based upon LaTeX. Rob Oakes has 
been working on a method for generating ebooks that is based upon LyX's 
XHTML output (potentially, HTML 5 output). In that case, the 
customization is done through CSS or through LyX's layout files.


But everything depends upon how much customization you want to do. LyX, 
like LaTeX, and like standards-based web applications, is designed 
around the idea of separating content from presentation. On the content 
side, no LaTeX knowledge is needed. It's on the presentation side where 
that becomes important.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/16/2012 05:05 PM, Colin Williams wrote:
I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is 
some division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a 
book that scales many platforms. If latex is required, then it's my 
opinion that lyx itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing.


Knowledge of LaTeX is required only for customization of certain 
elements of the appearance of e.g. section headings, and then only if 
you are using a form of output that is based upon LaTeX. Rob Oakes has 
been working on a method for generating ebooks that is based upon LyX's 
XHTML output (potentially, HTML 5 output). In that case, the 
customization is done through CSS or through LyX's layout files.


But everything depends upon how much customization you want to do. LyX, 
like LaTeX, and like standards-based web applications, is designed 
around the idea of separating content from presentation. On the content 
side, no LaTeX knowledge is needed. It's on the presentation side where 
that becomes important.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/16/2012 05:05 PM, Colin Williams wrote:
I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is 
some division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a 
book that scales many platforms. If latex is required, then it's my 
opinion that lyx itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing.


Knowledge of LaTeX is required only for customization of certain 
elements of the appearance of e.g. section headings, and then only if 
you are using a form of output that is based upon LaTeX. Rob Oakes has 
been working on a method for generating ebooks that is based upon LyX's 
XHTML output (potentially, HTML 5 output). In that case, the 
customization is done through CSS or through LyX's layout files.


But everything depends upon how much customization you want to do. LyX, 
like LaTeX, and like standards-based web applications, is designed 
around the idea of separating content from presentation. On the content 
side, no LaTeX knowledge is needed. It's on the presentation side where 
that becomes important.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Colin Williams]

I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is some
division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a book that
scales many platforms. If latex is required, then it's my opinion that lyx
itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing. However, that does not mean
I will not use it.

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:05:46 -0800
Colin Williams co...@seattlesoft.com wrote:

 I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is
 some division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a
 book that scales many platforms. 

If how much LaTeX knowledge is needed for LyX were the question asked
by a math exercise, then how many styles do you need to add/change
would be the given part of the exercise.

People who simply use their document class's styles and nothing more
need absolutely no LaTeX knowledge. People who add lots of styles and
extensively change the document class's styles need extensive LaTeX
knowledge. Those in between those extremes need moderate LaTeX
knowledge.


 If latex is required, then it's my
 opinion that lyx itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing.

Why? If you already know LaTeX, or can reasonably learn it, why
penalize yourself by banning your own use of LyX? Personally, I think
people are a lot smarter than Gates, Balmer and Jobs tried to convince
us we were. Gates, Balmer and Jobs had a financial incentive to
convince us we're dumb, and hence their opinions aren't reliable.

 However, that does not mean I will not use it.

Excellent!

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Colin Williams]

I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is some
division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a book that
scales many platforms. If latex is required, then it's my opinion that lyx
itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing. However, that does not mean
I will not use it.

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:05:46 -0800
Colin Williams co...@seattlesoft.com wrote:

 I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is
 some division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a
 book that scales many platforms. 

If how much LaTeX knowledge is needed for LyX were the question asked
by a math exercise, then how many styles do you need to add/change
would be the given part of the exercise.

People who simply use their document class's styles and nothing more
need absolutely no LaTeX knowledge. People who add lots of styles and
extensively change the document class's styles need extensive LaTeX
knowledge. Those in between those extremes need moderate LaTeX
knowledge.


 If latex is required, then it's my
 opinion that lyx itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing.

Why? If you already know LaTeX, or can reasonably learn it, why
penalize yourself by banning your own use of LyX? Personally, I think
people are a lot smarter than Gates, Balmer and Jobs tried to convince
us we were. Gates, Balmer and Jobs had a financial incentive to
convince us we're dumb, and hence their opinions aren't reliable.

 However, that does not mean I will not use it.

Excellent!

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Colin Williams]

I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is some
division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a book that
scales many platforms. If latex is required, then it's my opinion that lyx
itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing. However, that does not mean
I will not use it.

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:05:46 -0800
Colin Williams  wrote:

> I haven't been able to keep up with the subject. It seems there is
> some division about how much latex knowledge is required to create a
> book that scales many platforms. 

If "how much LaTeX knowledge is needed for LyX" were the question asked
by a math exercise, then "how many styles do you need to add/change"
would be the "given" part of the exercise.

People who simply use their document class's styles and nothing more
need absolutely no LaTeX knowledge. People who add lots of styles and
extensively change the document class's styles need extensive LaTeX
knowledge. Those in between those extremes need moderate LaTeX
knowledge.


> If latex is required, then it's my
> opinion that lyx itself isn't quite ready for ebook publishing.

Why? If you already know LaTeX, or can reasonably learn it, why
penalize yourself by banning your own use of LyX? Personally, I think
people are a lot smarter than Gates, Balmer and Jobs tried to convince
us we were. Gates, Balmer and Jobs had a financial incentive to
convince us we're dumb, and hence their opinions aren't reliable.

> However, that does not mean I will not use it.

Excellent!

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 3:27 AM, Richard Heck wrote:

 On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
 
 On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
 
 In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
 apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
 styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
 subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
 free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
 facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
 appearances and spacing.
 
 Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
 author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
 tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
 compile to pdf without the title and author data.
 
 You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
 easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
 document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
 Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
 \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.

I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting going 
around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.

I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the \@maketitle 
command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying it. Will undoubtedly 
be checking in here later about the changes I've made, where to put them, and 
how to use them.

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, 
men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. 

- Chief Seattle

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Marcelo Acuña]

 In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never

 apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
 styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
 subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
 free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
 facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
 appearances and spacing.
 
 Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
 author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
 tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
 compile to pdf without the title and author data.
 
 You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
 easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
 document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
 Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
 \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.

I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting going 
around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.
Eric
--

For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and all 
the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do with 
a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.
Marcelo

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 10:04 AM, Marcelo Acuña wrote:

  In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
  apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
  styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
  subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
  free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
  facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
  appearances and spacing.
  
  Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
  author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
  tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
  compile to pdf without the title and author data.
  
  You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
  easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
  document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
  Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
  \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.
 
 I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
 I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting 
 going around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.
 
 Eric
 --
 
 For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and 
 all the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do with 
 a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.

Thanks, Marcelo. My document is an article, so I don't have a title page. My 
beef with what koma-script does with the title and author is the size of the 
font. Way, way too big for my taste. Might also want to have them 
left-justified instead of centered, but that is less important. 

Sincerely,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

Hatred destroys. Love heals.

- Eknath Easwaran

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

2012/2/15 Marcelo Acuña mv...@yahoo.com.ar:

 For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and
 all the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do
 with a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.
 Marcelo


The textpos latex package (http://www.ctan.org/pkg/textpos)  allows
precise positioning of blocks of text on a page, with input in mm (or
pt). It's  one way to  typeset a title page (or title pages, for a
book) with ERT. That's what I eventually used for my book.

Cheers,

Stefano


-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Guenter Milde]

On 2012-02-15, Eric Weir wrote:
 On Feb 14, 2012, at 3:27 AM, Richard Heck wrote:
 On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
 On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

 You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography
 later. One easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the
 title from the document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify
 it as you see fit. Depending upon whether you have a title page or
 not, this is either the \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle
 command.

 I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and
 what I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be
 suggesting going around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't
 understand.

 I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
 \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
 it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
 made, where to put them, and how to use them.

The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
(English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Günter

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:

 On 2012-02-15, Eric Weir wrote:
 
 I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
 \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
 it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
 made, where to put them, and how to use them.
 
 The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
 comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
 (English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
 trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Thanks, Guenter. I've internalized the advice-- from you previously and others 
here--to minimize customization of existing classes. 

I suspect the problem I'm concerned about immediately will be a matter of 
changing font size specifications for the title and other environments whose 
defaults are too big for my taste. Probably pretty simple, but it'll probably 
take some studying on my part. 

And I do have the koma documentation. Just haven't printed out all 270 pages.

Sincerely, 
--
Eric Weir

Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, 
but certainty is an absurd one.
 
- Voltaire

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/15/2012 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:

I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
\@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
made, where to put them, and how to use them.

The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
(English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Unfortunately, this particular bit does not appear to be customizable. 
You can change the size of the title font with \setkomafont{title}{...}, 
but you can't do this for authors, and there is no way to affect 
justification, unless it's possible to cancel the \centering command 
that is issued.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:56 PM, Richard Heck wrote:

 On 02/15/2012 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:
 I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
 \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
 it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
 made, where to put them, and how to use them.
 The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
 comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
 (English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
 trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...
 
 Unfortunately, this particular bit does not appear to be customizable. You 
 can change the size of the title font with \setkomafont{title}{...}, but you 
 can't do this for authors, and there is no way to affect justification, 
 unless it's possible to cancel the \centering command that is issued.

Hmm. I thought koma-script was flexible. -;)

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult 
than it is for other people. 

- Thomas Mann

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 3:27 AM, Richard Heck wrote:

 On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
 
 On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
 
 In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
 apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
 styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
 subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
 free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
 facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
 appearances and spacing.
 
 Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
 author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
 tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
 compile to pdf without the title and author data.
 
 You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
 easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
 document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
 Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
 \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.

I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting going 
around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.

I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the \@maketitle 
command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying it. Will undoubtedly 
be checking in here later about the changes I've made, where to put them, and 
how to use them.

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, 
men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. 

- Chief Seattle

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Marcelo Acuña]

 In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never

 apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
 styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
 subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
 free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
 facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
 appearances and spacing.
 
 Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
 author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
 tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
 compile to pdf without the title and author data.
 
 You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
 easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
 document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
 Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
 \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.

I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting going 
around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.
Eric
--

For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and all 
the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do with 
a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.
Marcelo

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 10:04 AM, Marcelo Acuña wrote:

  In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
  apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
  styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
  subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
  free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
  facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
  appearances and spacing.
  
  Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
  author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
  tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
  compile to pdf without the title and author data.
  
  You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
  easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
  document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
  Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
  \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.
 
 I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
 I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting 
 going around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.
 
 Eric
 --
 
 For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and 
 all the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do with 
 a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.

Thanks, Marcelo. My document is an article, so I don't have a title page. My 
beef with what koma-script does with the title and author is the size of the 
font. Way, way too big for my taste. Might also want to have them 
left-justified instead of centered, but that is less important. 

Sincerely,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

Hatred destroys. Love heals.

- Eknath Easwaran

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

2012/2/15 Marcelo Acuña mv...@yahoo.com.ar:

 For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and
 all the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do
 with a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.
 Marcelo


The textpos latex package (http://www.ctan.org/pkg/textpos)  allows
precise positioning of blocks of text on a page, with input in mm (or
pt). It's  one way to  typeset a title page (or title pages, for a
book) with ERT. That's what I eventually used for my book.

Cheers,

Stefano


-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Guenter Milde]

On 2012-02-15, Eric Weir wrote:
 On Feb 14, 2012, at 3:27 AM, Richard Heck wrote:
 On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
 On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

 You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography
 later. One easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the
 title from the document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify
 it as you see fit. Depending upon whether you have a title page or
 not, this is either the \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle
 command.

 I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and
 what I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be
 suggesting going around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't
 understand.

 I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
 \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
 it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
 made, where to put them, and how to use them.

The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
(English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Günter

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:

 On 2012-02-15, Eric Weir wrote:
 
 I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
 \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
 it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
 made, where to put them, and how to use them.
 
 The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
 comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
 (English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
 trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Thanks, Guenter. I've internalized the advice-- from you previously and others 
here--to minimize customization of existing classes. 

I suspect the problem I'm concerned about immediately will be a matter of 
changing font size specifications for the title and other environments whose 
defaults are too big for my taste. Probably pretty simple, but it'll probably 
take some studying on my part. 

And I do have the koma documentation. Just haven't printed out all 270 pages.

Sincerely, 
--
Eric Weir

Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, 
but certainty is an absurd one.
 
- Voltaire

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/15/2012 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:

I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
\@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
made, where to put them, and how to use them.

The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
(English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Unfortunately, this particular bit does not appear to be customizable. 
You can change the size of the title font with \setkomafont{title}{...}, 
but you can't do this for authors, and there is no way to affect 
justification, unless it's possible to cancel the \centering command 
that is issued.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:56 PM, Richard Heck wrote:

 On 02/15/2012 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:
 I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
 \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
 it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
 made, where to put them, and how to use them.
 The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
 comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
 (English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
 trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...
 
 Unfortunately, this particular bit does not appear to be customizable. You 
 can change the size of the title font with \setkomafont{title}{...}, but you 
 can't do this for authors, and there is no way to affect justification, 
 unless it's possible to cancel the \centering command that is issued.

Hmm. I thought koma-script was flexible. -;)

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult 
than it is for other people. 

- Thomas Mann

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 3:27 AM, Richard Heck wrote:

> On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
> 
>> On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
>> 
>>> In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
>>> apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
>>> styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
>>> subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
>>> free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
>>> facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
>>> appearances and spacing.
>> 
>> Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
>> author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
>> tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
>> compile to pdf without the title and author data.
> 
> You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
> easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
> document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
> Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
> \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.

I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting going 
around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.

I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the \@maketitle 
command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying it. Will undoubtedly 
be checking in here later about the changes I've made, where to put them, and 
how to use them.

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, 
men would die from a great loneliness of spirit." 

- Chief Seattle

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Marcelo Acuña]

>>> In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never

>>> apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
>>> styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
>>> subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
>>> free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
>>> facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
>>> appearances and spacing.
>> 
>> Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
>> author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
>> tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
>> compile to pdf without the title and author data.
> 
> You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
> easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
> document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
> Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
> \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.

I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting going 
around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.
Eric
--

For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and all 
the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do with 
a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.
Marcelo

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 10:04 AM, Marcelo Acuña wrote:

> >>> In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
> >>> apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
> >>> styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
> >>> subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
> >>> free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
> >>> facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
> >>> appearances and spacing.
> >> 
> >> Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and 
> >> author environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I 
> >> tried formatting a title using the section environment and it would not 
> >> compile to pdf without the title and author data.
> > 
> > You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. One 
> > easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from the 
> > document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see fit. 
> > Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either the 
> > \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.
> 
> I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and what 
> I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be suggesting 
> going around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't understand.
> 
> Eric
> --
> 
> For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and 
> all the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do with 
> a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.

Thanks, Marcelo. My document is an article, so I don't have a title page. My 
beef with what koma-script does with the title and author is the size of the 
font. Way, way too big for my taste. Might also want to have them 
left-justified instead of centered, but that is less important. 

Sincerely,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

"Hatred destroys. Love heals."

- Eknath Easwaran

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

2012/2/15 Marcelo Acuña :
>
> For title page I decided to do them with ERT for spacing and alignment, and
> all the material in a separate file which then included. You can also do
> with a graphic design application, create a file and then include it.
> Marcelo
>

The textpos latex package (http://www.ctan.org/pkg/textpos)  allows
precise positioning of blocks of text on a page, with input in mm (or
pt). It's  one way to  typeset a title page (or title pages, for a
book) with ERT. That's what I eventually used for my book.

Cheers,

Stefano


-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Guenter Milde]

On 2012-02-15, Eric Weir wrote:
> On Feb 14, 2012, at 3:27 AM, Richard Heck wrote:
>> On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:
>>> On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

>> You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography
>> later. One easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the
>> title from the document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify
>> it as you see fit. Depending upon whether you have a title page or
>> not, this is either the \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle
>> command.

> I don't understand, Richard. This sounds like the normal procedure and
> what I've been doing and not liking the result. I took Steve to be
> suggesting going around that. Would not be surprised if I didn't
> understand.

> I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
> \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
> it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
> made, where to put them, and how to use them.

The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
(English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Günter

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:

> On 2012-02-15, Eric Weir wrote:
> 
>> I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
>> \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
>> it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
>> made, where to put them, and how to use them.
> 
> The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
> comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
> (English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
> trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Thanks, Guenter. I've internalized the advice-- from you previously and others 
here--to minimize customization of existing classes. 

I suspect the problem I'm concerned about immediately will be a matter of 
changing font size specifications for the title and other environments whose 
defaults are too big for my taste. Probably pretty simple, but it'll probably 
take some studying on my part. 

And I do have the koma documentation. Just haven't printed out all 270 pages.

Sincerely, 
--
Eric Weir

"Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, 
but certainty is an absurd one."
 
- Voltaire

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/15/2012 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:

I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
\@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
made, where to put them, and how to use them.

The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
(English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...

Unfortunately, this particular bit does not appear to be customizable. 
You can change the size of the title font with \setkomafont{title}{...}, 
but you can't do this for authors, and there is no way to affect 
justification, unless it's possible to cancel the \centering command 
that is issued.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:56 PM, Richard Heck wrote:

> On 02/15/2012 11:29 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:
>>> I've also committed to koma-script. I would like to modify the
>>> \@maketitle command. I've located it in scrartcl.cls. Will be studying
>>> it. Will undoubtedly be checking in here later about the changes I've
>>> made, where to put them, and how to use them.
>> The KOMA classes are highly customizable. Please look at the
>> comprehensive documentation in scrguide.pdf (German) or scrguien.pdf
>> (English) for recommended ways to customize the title page(s) before
>> trying the hard way of modifying the maketitle...
>> 
> Unfortunately, this particular bit does not appear to be customizable. You 
> can change the size of the title font with \setkomafont{title}{...}, but you 
> can't do this for authors, and there is no way to affect justification, 
> unless it's possible to cancel the \centering command that is issued.

Hmm. I thought koma-script was flexible. -;)

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult 
than it is for other people." 

- Thomas Mann

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

 In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
 apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
 styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
 subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
 free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
 facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
 appearances and spacing.

Advice well-taken, Steve. On both counts--using styles and front matter.

Your comment on the latter may be helpful to me. First, I've been off-and-on 
getting started with LyX for some time, now. Second, I've committed to the 
KOMA-Script document class, for now the article class. Third, I don't like what 
it does with the title and author information--huge bold title and huge author 
fonting centered. I want the first to be only slightly larger font size than 
body text and author the same size as body text, both flush-left, that I am 
less adamant about the latter.

Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and author 
environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I tried 
formatting a title using the section environment and it would not compile to 
pdf without the title and author data.

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

Style is truth. 

- Ray Bradbury

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

 Uwe Stöhr wrote:
  I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.
  
 Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX as an 
 input format (this is in the humanities field). Generally, they want camera 
 ready PDF for monographs (which then can be of course done with TeX), or MS 
 Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have experienced that some of 
 these journals and proceedings were in fact produced with TeX in the end, but 
 even then they have not accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because 
 the editors and reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.

How do you deal with this?

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
eew...@bellsouth.net

The invincible shield of caring
Is a weapon sent from the sky 
against being dead. 

- Tao Te Ching 67

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Eric Weir wrote:
 How do you deal with this?

For monographs (or if I'm editing a book myself) I use LyX/LaTeX to make a 
camera-ready PDF. This works pretty well, except that I have to import 
colloborator's chapters from word usually (via LibreOffice's LaTeX export). I 
have also used Word and InDesign for books in the past, but frankly, I never 
want to do this again. These tools are just not prepared for books. I spent 
more time with fixing glitches than I need for importing into LyX. And the 
result looks much better with LyX/LaTeX, anyway (InDesign produces good 
typography as well, but it is [or was, back then] deficient in terms of 
hyphenation and things such as automatic running headers).

For papers, I use LyX to write the first version, then export to Word (via 
ODF/TeX4ht), polish it for submission and use Word/LibreOffice for further 
revisions. This is the more annoying part. I could use Word from the 
beginning, but I'm much faster with LyX, also I use BibTeX quite a lot.

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/14/2012 02:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:


Uwe Stöhr wrote:

 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.

Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX 
as an input format (this is in the humanities field).



Oxford.

Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:

On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:


In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
appearances and spacing.

Advice well-taken, Steve. On both counts--using styles and front matter.

Your comment on the latter may be helpful to me. First, I've been off-and-on 
getting started with LyX for some time, now. Second, I've committed to the 
KOMA-Script document class, for now the article class. Third, I don't like what 
it does with the title and author information--huge bold title and huge author 
fonting centered. I want the first to be only slightly larger font size than 
body text and author the same size as body text, both flush-left, that I am 
less adamant about the latter.

Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and author 
environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I tried 
formatting a title using the section environment and it would not compile to 
pdf without the title and author data.

You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. 
One easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from 
the document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see 
fit. Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either 
the \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 7:19 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

 For monographs (or if I'm editing a book myself) I use LyX/LaTeX to make a 
 camera-ready PDF. This works pretty well, except that I have to import 
 colloborator's chapters from word usually (via LibreOffice's LaTeX export). I 
 have also used Word and InDesign for books in the past, but frankly, I never 
 want to do this again. These tools are just not prepared for books. I spent 
 more time with fixing glitches than I need for importing into LyX. And the 
 result looks much better with LyX/LaTeX, anyway (InDesign produces good 
 typography as well, but it is [or was, back then] deficient in terms of 
 hyphenation and things such as automatic running headers).
  
 For papers, I use LyX to write the first version, then export to Word (via 
 ODF/TeX4ht), polish it for submission and use Word/LibreOffice for further 
 revisions. This is the more annoying part. I could use Word from the 
 beginning, but I'm much faster with LyX, also I use BibTeX quite a lot.


Thanks, Jurgen. 

While I'm at it, do I recall correctly that you're in the humanities?

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

Hatred destroys. Love heals.

- Eknath Easwaran

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Eric Weir wrote:
 While I'm at it, do I recall correctly that you're in the humanities?

Yes (linguistics, for that matter).

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

 In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
 apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
 styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
 subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
 free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
 facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
 appearances and spacing.

Advice well-taken, Steve. On both counts--using styles and front matter.

Your comment on the latter may be helpful to me. First, I've been off-and-on 
getting started with LyX for some time, now. Second, I've committed to the 
KOMA-Script document class, for now the article class. Third, I don't like what 
it does with the title and author information--huge bold title and huge author 
fonting centered. I want the first to be only slightly larger font size than 
body text and author the same size as body text, both flush-left, that I am 
less adamant about the latter.

Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and author 
environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I tried 
formatting a title using the section environment and it would not compile to 
pdf without the title and author data.

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

Style is truth. 

- Ray Bradbury

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

 Uwe Stöhr wrote:
  I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.
  
 Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX as an 
 input format (this is in the humanities field). Generally, they want camera 
 ready PDF for monographs (which then can be of course done with TeX), or MS 
 Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have experienced that some of 
 these journals and proceedings were in fact produced with TeX in the end, but 
 even then they have not accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because 
 the editors and reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.

How do you deal with this?

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
eew...@bellsouth.net

The invincible shield of caring
Is a weapon sent from the sky 
against being dead. 

- Tao Te Ching 67

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Eric Weir wrote:
 How do you deal with this?

For monographs (or if I'm editing a book myself) I use LyX/LaTeX to make a 
camera-ready PDF. This works pretty well, except that I have to import 
colloborator's chapters from word usually (via LibreOffice's LaTeX export). I 
have also used Word and InDesign for books in the past, but frankly, I never 
want to do this again. These tools are just not prepared for books. I spent 
more time with fixing glitches than I need for importing into LyX. And the 
result looks much better with LyX/LaTeX, anyway (InDesign produces good 
typography as well, but it is [or was, back then] deficient in terms of 
hyphenation and things such as automatic running headers).

For papers, I use LyX to write the first version, then export to Word (via 
ODF/TeX4ht), polish it for submission and use Word/LibreOffice for further 
revisions. This is the more annoying part. I could use Word from the 
beginning, but I'm much faster with LyX, also I use BibTeX quite a lot.

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/14/2012 02:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:


Uwe Stöhr wrote:

 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.

Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX 
as an input format (this is in the humanities field).



Oxford.

Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:

On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:


In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
appearances and spacing.

Advice well-taken, Steve. On both counts--using styles and front matter.

Your comment on the latter may be helpful to me. First, I've been off-and-on 
getting started with LyX for some time, now. Second, I've committed to the 
KOMA-Script document class, for now the article class. Third, I don't like what 
it does with the title and author information--huge bold title and huge author 
fonting centered. I want the first to be only slightly larger font size than 
body text and author the same size as body text, both flush-left, that I am 
less adamant about the latter.

Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and author 
environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I tried 
formatting a title using the section environment and it would not compile to 
pdf without the title and author data.

You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. 
One easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from 
the document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see 
fit. Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either 
the \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 7:19 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

 For monographs (or if I'm editing a book myself) I use LyX/LaTeX to make a 
 camera-ready PDF. This works pretty well, except that I have to import 
 colloborator's chapters from word usually (via LibreOffice's LaTeX export). I 
 have also used Word and InDesign for books in the past, but frankly, I never 
 want to do this again. These tools are just not prepared for books. I spent 
 more time with fixing glitches than I need for importing into LyX. And the 
 result looks much better with LyX/LaTeX, anyway (InDesign produces good 
 typography as well, but it is [or was, back then] deficient in terms of 
 hyphenation and things such as automatic running headers).
  
 For papers, I use LyX to write the first version, then export to Word (via 
 ODF/TeX4ht), polish it for submission and use Word/LibreOffice for further 
 revisions. This is the more annoying part. I could use Word from the 
 beginning, but I'm much faster with LyX, also I use BibTeX quite a lot.


Thanks, Jurgen. 

While I'm at it, do I recall correctly that you're in the humanities?

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

Hatred destroys. Love heals.

- Eknath Easwaran

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Eric Weir wrote:
 While I'm at it, do I recall correctly that you're in the humanities?

Yes (linguistics, for that matter).

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

> In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
> apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
> styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
> subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
> free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
> facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
> appearances and spacing.

Advice well-taken, Steve. On both counts--using styles and front matter.

Your comment on the latter may be helpful to me. First, I've been off-and-on 
getting started with LyX for some time, now. Second, I've committed to the 
KOMA-Script document class, for now the article class. Third, I don't like what 
it does with the title and author information--huge bold title and huge author 
fonting centered. I want the first to be only slightly larger font size than 
body text and author the same size as body text, both flush-left, that I am 
less adamant about the latter.

Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and author 
environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I tried 
formatting a title using the section environment and it would not compile to 
pdf without the title and author data.

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA
eew...@bellsouth.net

"Style is truth." 

- Ray Bradbury

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 2:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

> Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> > I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.
>  
> Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX as an 
> input format (this is in the humanities field). Generally, they want camera 
> ready PDF for monographs (which then can be of course done with TeX), or MS 
> Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have experienced that some of 
> these journals and proceedings were in fact produced with TeX in the end, but 
> even then they have not accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because 
> the editors and reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.

How do you deal with this?

Thanks,
--
Eric Weir
eew...@bellsouth.net

"The invincible shield of caring
Is a weapon sent from the sky 
against being dead." 

- Tao Te Ching 67

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Eric Weir wrote:
> How do you deal with this?

For monographs (or if I'm editing a book myself) I use LyX/LaTeX to make a 
camera-ready PDF. This works pretty well, except that I have to import 
colloborator's chapters from word usually (via LibreOffice's LaTeX export). I 
have also used Word and InDesign for books in the past, but frankly, I never 
want to do this again. These tools are just not prepared for books. I spent 
more time with fixing glitches than I need for importing into LyX. And the 
result looks much better with LyX/LaTeX, anyway (InDesign produces good 
typography as well, but it is [or was, back then] deficient in terms of 
hyphenation and things such as automatic running headers).

For papers, I use LyX to write the first version, then export to Word (via 
ODF/TeX4ht), polish it for submission and use Word/LibreOffice for further 
revisions. This is the more annoying part. I could use Word from the 
beginning, but I'm much faster with LyX, also I use BibTeX quite a lot.

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/14/2012 02:01 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:


Uwe Stöhr wrote:

> I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.

Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX 
as an input format (this is in the humanities field).



Oxford.

Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Richard Heck]

On 02/14/2012 07:01 AM, Eric Weir wrote:

On Feb 13, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Steve Litt wrote:


In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
appearances and spacing.

Advice well-taken, Steve. On both counts--using styles and front matter.

Your comment on the latter may be helpful to me. First, I've been off-and-on 
getting started with LyX for some time, now. Second, I've committed to the 
KOMA-Script document class, for now the article class. Third, I don't like what 
it does with the title and author information--huge bold title and huge author 
fonting centered. I want the first to be only slightly larger font size than 
body text and author the same size as body text, both flush-left, that I am 
less adamant about the latter.

Am I correct in understand you that I can just skip using the title and author 
environments and write and format the as if body text? Recently I tried 
formatting a title using the section environment and it would not compile to 
pdf without the title and author data.

You just put them in as author and title, and fix the typography later. 
One easy way to do it is just to copy the code that sets the title from 
the document class, in this case scrartcl.cls, and modify it as you see 
fit. Depending upon whether you have a title page or not, this is either 
the \maketitle command or else the \@maketitle command.


Richard

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Eric Weir]

On Feb 14, 2012, at 7:19 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

> For monographs (or if I'm editing a book myself) I use LyX/LaTeX to make a 
> camera-ready PDF. This works pretty well, except that I have to import 
> colloborator's chapters from word usually (via LibreOffice's LaTeX export). I 
> have also used Word and InDesign for books in the past, but frankly, I never 
> want to do this again. These tools are just not prepared for books. I spent 
> more time with fixing glitches than I need for importing into LyX. And the 
> result looks much better with LyX/LaTeX, anyway (InDesign produces good 
> typography as well, but it is [or was, back then] deficient in terms of 
> hyphenation and things such as automatic running headers).
>  
> For papers, I use LyX to write the first version, then export to Word (via 
> ODF/TeX4ht), polish it for submission and use Word/LibreOffice for further 
> revisions. This is the more annoying part. I could use Word from the 
> beginning, but I'm much faster with LyX, also I use BibTeX quite a lot.


Thanks, Jurgen. 

While I'm at it, do I recall correctly that you're in the humanities?

--
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eew...@bellsouth.net

"Hatred destroys. Love heals."

- Eknath Easwaran

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Eric Weir wrote:
> While I'm at it, do I recall correctly that you're in the humanities?

Yes (linguistics, for that matter).

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 12.02.2012 14:53, schrieb Colin Williams:
 To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis template files.
 You find them in LyX's installation folder under
 \Resources\templates\thesis.

Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
though.

Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
least an idea of how Latex works and thinks. You need to learn a bit
about environments (paragraph styles), how fonts are used in LaTeX,
about the various components of a page, about compilation, etcetera.
Lyx does a marvelous job at hiding most of the complexity of Latex,
but when push comes to show and things go wrong (i.e. the file does
not compile, your output does not look th way it should, etcetera),
knowing a bit of the language Lyx uses to produce output becomes
precious. If, and when, you decide to start using Lyx, I would buy a
copy of The Latex Companion [1]  and start reading at least the first
few chapters.

Cheers,

Stefano

[1] http://tinyurl.com/7vr4hzk




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:28:30 -0600
stefano franchi stefano.fran...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
  Am 12.02.2012 14:53, schrieb Colin Williams:
  To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis
  template files. You find them in LyX's installation folder under
  \Resources\templates\thesis.
 
 Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
 to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
 produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
 of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
 manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
 though.

Memoir is cool, but be very careful, because Memoir screws up with
certain other packages, most notably hyperref, for which you'll need the
memhfixc package, and a lot of rain dances to get it to work. Or at
least that's how I remember it. My thought is if you use Memoir, use it
every time so you get to know Memoir like the back of your hand, and
you can fix hyperref problems in minutes instead of days.

 
 Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
 you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
 least an idea of how Latex works and thinks. You need to learn a bit
 about environments (paragraph styles), how fonts are used in LaTeX,
 about the various components of a page, about compilation, etcetera.
 Lyx does a marvelous job at hiding most of the complexity of Latex,
 but when push comes to show and things go wrong (i.e. the file does
 not compile, your output does not look th way it should, etcetera),
 knowing a bit of the language Lyx uses to produce output becomes
 precious. If, and when, you decide to start using Lyx, I would buy a
 copy of The Latex Companion [1]  and start reading at least the first
 few chapters.

IIRC I bought both The Latex Companion and Guide to LaTeX and
downloaded the Memoir doc class documentation and read it all, because
yeah, if you ever want to create or change a style, you're going to
need a good knowledge of LaTeX.

Stefano makes an excellent point that lack of LaTeX knowledge slows you
down, as it does for me to this day, 11 years after I came to LyX. One
way I like to minimize the slowing is, when I create a new style, do a
minimal job of it so it's recognizable as a different style on both
output and the LyX environment. So I take 5 or 10 minutes to make the
style and then start pounding out content again. Then, every once in a
while, I take a technical day and make the styles look how I want them
to look.

Thanks

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Marcelo Acuña]

  To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis

  template files. You find them in LyX's installation folder under
  \Resources\templates\thesis.
 
 Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
 to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
 produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
 of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
 manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
 though.


I am using koma-script book class and I recommended it.
So far I did not need to write my own environment.

Marcelo

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 13.02.2012 15:28, schrieb stefano franchi:


Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
to use the memoir class.


This is one option, the other one is the KOMA-script book class. This is used for most LyX manuals 
and it is my opinion a bit more flexible. But this is of course a matter of taste.



Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
least an idea of how Latex works and thinks.


I don't agree, LyX is designed that you don't need to learn LaTeX and that is why I designed the 
thesis template. You see there that you cann do almost all you need the LyX way. For very special 
things I wrote LyX's EmbeddedObjects manual. So in case you have troubles you should find always a 
quick answer in the LyX manuals. The only thing one needs to learn is to concentrate o writing the 
text and not to look frequently how it will look. The typical beginner's mistake is to try to 
fine-tune everything at the beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final 
formatting can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
(When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's guidelines. In most cases the 
publisher will do the final layout for you, if you like this or not.)


regards Uwe

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 15:28, schrieb stefano franchi:
 I don't agree, LyX is designed that you don't need to learn LaTeX and that
 is why I designed the thesis template. You see there that you cann do almost
 all you need the LyX way. For very special things I wrote LyX's
 EmbeddedObjects manual. So in case you have troubles you should find always
 a quick answer in the LyX manuals. The only thing one needs to learn is to
 concentrate o writing the text and not to look frequently how it will look.
 The typical beginner's mistake is to try to fine-tune everything at the
 beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final formatting
 can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
 (When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's
 guidelines. In most cases the publisher will do the final layout for you, if
 you like this or not.)

Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
What happens more and more frequently, though, is that your publisher
will give you a set of guidelines set up for Microsoft Word and will
want a pdf back. At that point getting to know LaTex is inevitable.

I do agree with you, Uwe: concentrate on writing, not on typesetting.
However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
not)---it will make everything simpler later on.

Cheers,

Stefano


 regards Uwe



-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012, Steve Litt wrote:


Memoir is cool, but be very careful, because Memoir screws up with certain
other packages, most notably hyperref, for which you'll need the memhfixc
package, and a lot of rain dances to get it to work. Or at least that's
how I remember it. My thought is if you use Memoir, use it every time so
you get to know Memoir like the back of your hand, and you can fix
hyperref problems in minutes instead of days.


  Some years ago I settled on the KOMA-Script classes as my defaults.
Learned how to tweak them to my specifications and stuck with them ever
since.

  Like many applications (and linux/*BSD in general) there are multiple
tools to accomplish any task. It's better to pick one and learn it well than
to switch from one to another. I've done the same with R: I use the lattice
package for plotting while others use the base plot package and still others
prefer ggplot2.

  By the same token, I've adopted the Palatino typeface as the default for
all my LyX documents and PSTricks for all vector plotting. Makes life
simpler and more productive.

Rich

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the humanity-linked 
publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes even require MS Word format but transform 
the word file to TeX to be able to layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.



However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
not)---it will make everything simpler later on.


I still cannot agree to this. If you need a special LaTeX book, then I failed my goal. I invested 
countless hours for the LyX documentation to overcome the need of learning LaTeX. (When I started 
TeXing it frustrated me a lot and the LaTeX books even more.)


What is of course helpful is to look into the documentation of the document class you are using. So 
in case you prefer memoir or KOMA-script, look at its documentation file, but first after you 
finished your first chapter. Then you already have a feeling how writing with LyX works. Document 
class options can be added and removed at any time later.


regards Uwe

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
 humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
 even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
 layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.

Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.


 However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
 choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
 not)---it will make everything simpler later on.


 I still cannot agree to this. If you need a special LaTeX book, then I
 failed my goal. I invested countless hours for the LyX documentation to
 overcome the need of learning LaTeX. (When I started TeXing it frustrated me
 a lot and the LaTeX books even more.)

 What is of course helpful is to look into the documentation of the document
 class you are using. So in case you prefer memoir or KOMA-script, look at
 its documentation file, but first after you finished your first chapter.
 Then you already have a feeling how writing with LyX works. Document class
 options can be added and removed at any time later.

This is a matter of preference. Personally, I think the content/format
separation that LateX (and therefore lyx) is built upon is far from
perfect. It is a great regulative idea but it doesn't always
work---witness the counteless pieces of advice on this list to use ERT
code (which is often TeX code). I prefer to like to know my destiny
beforehand. Then again, I am a pessimist by nature.


Cheers,

Stefano




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jens Nöckel]

On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:58 PM, stefano franchi wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:
 
 
 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
 
 
 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
 humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
 even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
 layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.
 
 Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
 publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
 they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
 one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
 presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
 colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
 CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
 scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.
 
Sorry, Stefano - but LaTeX is undoubtedly the main physics publication vehicle. 

And LyX has gotten orders of magnitude better at decoupling the user experience 
from the LaTeX source in the past decade, so I would agree that you no longer 
need to know LaTeX to use it in a standard way. There are still the occasional 
LaTeX errors, but I can't recall any specific recent example, and that just 
proves that things have improved a lot…

Jens

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:53:27 -0800
Colin Williams co...@seattlesoft.com wrote:

 I'm writing a book. I would like to consider the possibility that I
 will do a small print run of 1000-5000 copies. I am certain I'm going
 to publish it as an ebook. I would expect the printed book would be
 in paperback form. I would like the lyx-users to tell me if they
 think its the right tool for the job. I know lyx is nice for making
 mathematics papers,but is it good for making a book which you want to
 reformat for displays and printed pages of varying sizes? Are there
 other programs I should consider?

Hi Colin,

Now that we're all discussing document classes and details, and it
looks like you actually might use LyX, I think it's time for me to
repeat my twice-annual advice.

LITT'S TWICE ANNUAL ADVICE:

In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
appearances and spacing.

I've done it both ways, and it's much easier and less frustrating to do
it the way I discussed in the preceding paragraph.

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Jens Nöckel noec...@uoregon.edu wrote:

 On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:58 PM, stefano franchi wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
 humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
 even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
 layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.

 Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
 publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
 they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
 one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
 presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
 colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
 CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
 scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.

 Sorry, Stefano - but LaTeX is undoubtedly the main physics publication 
 vehicle.



Glad to hear it! The day MS Word goes out of existence I will be a happy camper.


 And LyX has gotten orders of magnitude better at decoupling the user 
 experience from the LaTeX source in the past decade, so I would agree that 
 you no longer need to know LaTeX to use it in a standard way. There are still 
 the occasional LaTeX errors, but I can't recall any specific recent example, 
 and that just proves that things have improved a lot…


Here we disagree. I have been helping another user with a conversion
issue just today---and I would not have gone anywhere without knowing
(a bit of) LaTex. Lyx may well have reach the poitn where 80% or 90%
of what you need to do is Latex-free. Even 95%. Still, it is not 100%
(and, in my opinion, it never will. Latex certainly isn't).
This is not meant to be a criticism of the great job of the Lyx
developers. I think Lyx is a great program that would deserves a much
greater user base than it has. I am certainly glad I use it---and I
don't use it anything else.

I'll shut up now---we are veering dangerously close to pure
philosophy---and that's work ;-)

Cheers,

Stefano




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.

Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX as an 
input format (this is in the humanities field). Generally, they want camera 
ready PDF for monographs (which then can be of course done with TeX), or MS 
Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have experienced that some of 
these journals and proceedings were in fact produced with TeX in the end, but 
even then they have not accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because the 
editors and reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 12.02.2012 14:53, schrieb Colin Williams:
 To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis template files.
 You find them in LyX's installation folder under
 \Resources\templates\thesis.

Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
though.

Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
least an idea of how Latex works and thinks. You need to learn a bit
about environments (paragraph styles), how fonts are used in LaTeX,
about the various components of a page, about compilation, etcetera.
Lyx does a marvelous job at hiding most of the complexity of Latex,
but when push comes to show and things go wrong (i.e. the file does
not compile, your output does not look th way it should, etcetera),
knowing a bit of the language Lyx uses to produce output becomes
precious. If, and when, you decide to start using Lyx, I would buy a
copy of The Latex Companion [1]  and start reading at least the first
few chapters.

Cheers,

Stefano

[1] http://tinyurl.com/7vr4hzk




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:28:30 -0600
stefano franchi stefano.fran...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
  Am 12.02.2012 14:53, schrieb Colin Williams:
  To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis
  template files. You find them in LyX's installation folder under
  \Resources\templates\thesis.
 
 Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
 to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
 produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
 of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
 manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
 though.

Memoir is cool, but be very careful, because Memoir screws up with
certain other packages, most notably hyperref, for which you'll need the
memhfixc package, and a lot of rain dances to get it to work. Or at
least that's how I remember it. My thought is if you use Memoir, use it
every time so you get to know Memoir like the back of your hand, and
you can fix hyperref problems in minutes instead of days.

 
 Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
 you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
 least an idea of how Latex works and thinks. You need to learn a bit
 about environments (paragraph styles), how fonts are used in LaTeX,
 about the various components of a page, about compilation, etcetera.
 Lyx does a marvelous job at hiding most of the complexity of Latex,
 but when push comes to show and things go wrong (i.e. the file does
 not compile, your output does not look th way it should, etcetera),
 knowing a bit of the language Lyx uses to produce output becomes
 precious. If, and when, you decide to start using Lyx, I would buy a
 copy of The Latex Companion [1]  and start reading at least the first
 few chapters.

IIRC I bought both The Latex Companion and Guide to LaTeX and
downloaded the Memoir doc class documentation and read it all, because
yeah, if you ever want to create or change a style, you're going to
need a good knowledge of LaTeX.

Stefano makes an excellent point that lack of LaTeX knowledge slows you
down, as it does for me to this day, 11 years after I came to LyX. One
way I like to minimize the slowing is, when I create a new style, do a
minimal job of it so it's recognizable as a different style on both
output and the LyX environment. So I take 5 or 10 minutes to make the
style and then start pounding out content again. Then, every once in a
while, I take a technical day and make the styles look how I want them
to look.

Thanks

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Marcelo Acuña]

  To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis

  template files. You find them in LyX's installation folder under
  \Resources\templates\thesis.
 
 Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
 to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
 produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
 of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
 manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
 though.


I am using koma-script book class and I recommended it.
So far I did not need to write my own environment.

Marcelo

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 13.02.2012 15:28, schrieb stefano franchi:


Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
to use the memoir class.


This is one option, the other one is the KOMA-script book class. This is used for most LyX manuals 
and it is my opinion a bit more flexible. But this is of course a matter of taste.



Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
least an idea of how Latex works and thinks.


I don't agree, LyX is designed that you don't need to learn LaTeX and that is why I designed the 
thesis template. You see there that you cann do almost all you need the LyX way. For very special 
things I wrote LyX's EmbeddedObjects manual. So in case you have troubles you should find always a 
quick answer in the LyX manuals. The only thing one needs to learn is to concentrate o writing the 
text and not to look frequently how it will look. The typical beginner's mistake is to try to 
fine-tune everything at the beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final 
formatting can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
(When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's guidelines. In most cases the 
publisher will do the final layout for you, if you like this or not.)


regards Uwe

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 15:28, schrieb stefano franchi:
 I don't agree, LyX is designed that you don't need to learn LaTeX and that
 is why I designed the thesis template. You see there that you cann do almost
 all you need the LyX way. For very special things I wrote LyX's
 EmbeddedObjects manual. So in case you have troubles you should find always
 a quick answer in the LyX manuals. The only thing one needs to learn is to
 concentrate o writing the text and not to look frequently how it will look.
 The typical beginner's mistake is to try to fine-tune everything at the
 beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final formatting
 can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
 (When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's
 guidelines. In most cases the publisher will do the final layout for you, if
 you like this or not.)

Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
What happens more and more frequently, though, is that your publisher
will give you a set of guidelines set up for Microsoft Word and will
want a pdf back. At that point getting to know LaTex is inevitable.

I do agree with you, Uwe: concentrate on writing, not on typesetting.
However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
not)---it will make everything simpler later on.

Cheers,

Stefano


 regards Uwe



-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012, Steve Litt wrote:


Memoir is cool, but be very careful, because Memoir screws up with certain
other packages, most notably hyperref, for which you'll need the memhfixc
package, and a lot of rain dances to get it to work. Or at least that's
how I remember it. My thought is if you use Memoir, use it every time so
you get to know Memoir like the back of your hand, and you can fix
hyperref problems in minutes instead of days.


  Some years ago I settled on the KOMA-Script classes as my defaults.
Learned how to tweak them to my specifications and stuck with them ever
since.

  Like many applications (and linux/*BSD in general) there are multiple
tools to accomplish any task. It's better to pick one and learn it well than
to switch from one to another. I've done the same with R: I use the lattice
package for plotting while others use the base plot package and still others
prefer ggplot2.

  By the same token, I've adopted the Palatino typeface as the default for
all my LyX documents and PSTricks for all vector plotting. Makes life
simpler and more productive.

Rich

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the humanity-linked 
publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes even require MS Word format but transform 
the word file to TeX to be able to layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.



However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
not)---it will make everything simpler later on.


I still cannot agree to this. If you need a special LaTeX book, then I failed my goal. I invested 
countless hours for the LyX documentation to overcome the need of learning LaTeX. (When I started 
TeXing it frustrated me a lot and the LaTeX books even more.)


What is of course helpful is to look into the documentation of the document class you are using. So 
in case you prefer memoir or KOMA-script, look at its documentation file, but first after you 
finished your first chapter. Then you already have a feeling how writing with LyX works. Document 
class options can be added and removed at any time later.


regards Uwe

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
 humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
 even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
 layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.

Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.


 However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
 choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
 not)---it will make everything simpler later on.


 I still cannot agree to this. If you need a special LaTeX book, then I
 failed my goal. I invested countless hours for the LyX documentation to
 overcome the need of learning LaTeX. (When I started TeXing it frustrated me
 a lot and the LaTeX books even more.)

 What is of course helpful is to look into the documentation of the document
 class you are using. So in case you prefer memoir or KOMA-script, look at
 its documentation file, but first after you finished your first chapter.
 Then you already have a feeling how writing with LyX works. Document class
 options can be added and removed at any time later.

This is a matter of preference. Personally, I think the content/format
separation that LateX (and therefore lyx) is built upon is far from
perfect. It is a great regulative idea but it doesn't always
work---witness the counteless pieces of advice on this list to use ERT
code (which is often TeX code). I prefer to like to know my destiny
beforehand. Then again, I am a pessimist by nature.


Cheers,

Stefano




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jens Nöckel]

On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:58 PM, stefano franchi wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:
 
 
 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
 
 
 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
 humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
 even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
 layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.
 
 Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
 publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
 they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
 one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
 presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
 colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
 CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
 scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.
 
Sorry, Stefano - but LaTeX is undoubtedly the main physics publication vehicle. 

And LyX has gotten orders of magnitude better at decoupling the user experience 
from the LaTeX source in the past decade, so I would agree that you no longer 
need to know LaTeX to use it in a standard way. There are still the occasional 
LaTeX errors, but I can't recall any specific recent example, and that just 
proves that things have improved a lot…

Jens

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:53:27 -0800
Colin Williams co...@seattlesoft.com wrote:

 I'm writing a book. I would like to consider the possibility that I
 will do a small print run of 1000-5000 copies. I am certain I'm going
 to publish it as an ebook. I would expect the printed book would be
 in paperback form. I would like the lyx-users to tell me if they
 think its the right tool for the job. I know lyx is nice for making
 mathematics papers,but is it good for making a book which you want to
 reformat for displays and printed pages of varying sizes? Are there
 other programs I should consider?

Hi Colin,

Now that we're all discussing document classes and details, and it
looks like you actually might use LyX, I think it's time for me to
repeat my twice-annual advice.

LITT'S TWICE ANNUAL ADVICE:

In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
appearances and spacing.

I've done it both ways, and it's much easier and less frustrating to do
it the way I discussed in the preceding paragraph.

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Jens Nöckel noec...@uoregon.edu wrote:

 On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:58 PM, stefano franchi wrote:

 On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr uwesto...@web.de wrote:
 Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
 humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
 even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
 layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.

 Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
 publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
 they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
 one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
 presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
 colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
 CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
 scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.

 Sorry, Stefano - but LaTeX is undoubtedly the main physics publication 
 vehicle.



Glad to hear it! The day MS Word goes out of existence I will be a happy camper.


 And LyX has gotten orders of magnitude better at decoupling the user 
 experience from the LaTeX source in the past decade, so I would agree that 
 you no longer need to know LaTeX to use it in a standard way. There are still 
 the occasional LaTeX errors, but I can't recall any specific recent example, 
 and that just proves that things have improved a lot…


Here we disagree. I have been helping another user with a conversion
issue just today---and I would not have gone anywhere without knowing
(a bit of) LaTex. Lyx may well have reach the poitn where 80% or 90%
of what you need to do is Latex-free. Even 95%. Still, it is not 100%
(and, in my opinion, it never will. Latex certainly isn't).
This is not meant to be a criticism of the great job of the Lyx
developers. I think Lyx is a great program that would deserves a much
greater user base than it has. I am certainly glad I use it---and I
don't use it anything else.

I'll shut up now---we are veering dangerously close to pure
philosophy---and that's work ;-)

Cheers,

Stefano




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas AM University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Uwe Stöhr wrote:
 I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.

Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX as an 
input format (this is in the humanities field). Generally, they want camera 
ready PDF for monographs (which then can be of course done with TeX), or MS 
Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have experienced that some of 
these journals and proceedings were in fact produced with TeX in the end, but 
even then they have not accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because the 
editors and reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.

Jürgen

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM, Uwe Stöhr  wrote:
> Am 12.02.2012 14:53, schrieb Colin Williams:
> To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis template files.
> You find them in LyX's installation folder under
> \Resources\templates\thesis.

Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
though.

Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
least an idea of how Latex works and thinks. You need to learn a bit
about environments (paragraph styles), how fonts are used in LaTeX,
about the various components of a page, about compilation, etcetera.
Lyx does a marvelous job at hiding most of the complexity of Latex,
but when push comes to show and things go wrong (i.e. the file does
not compile, your output does not look th way it should, etcetera),
knowing a bit of the language Lyx uses to produce output becomes
precious. If, and when, you decide to start using Lyx, I would buy a
copy of The Latex Companion [1]  and start reading at least the first
few chapters.

Cheers,

Stefano

[1] http://tinyurl.com/7vr4hzk




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:28:30 -0600
stefano franchi  wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:01 PM, Uwe Stöhr  wrote:
> > Am 12.02.2012 14:53, schrieb Colin Williams:
> > To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis
> > template files. You find them in LyX's installation folder under
> > \Resources\templates\thesis.
> 
> Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
> to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
> produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
> of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
> manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
> though.

Memoir is cool, but be very careful, because Memoir screws up with
certain other packages, most notably hyperref, for which you'll need the
memhfixc package, and a lot of rain dances to get it to work. Or at
least that's how I remember it. My thought is if you use Memoir, use it
every time so you get to know Memoir like the back of your hand, and
you can fix hyperref problems in minutes instead of days.

> 
> Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
> you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
> least an idea of how Latex works and thinks. You need to learn a bit
> about environments (paragraph styles), how fonts are used in LaTeX,
> about the various components of a page, about compilation, etcetera.
> Lyx does a marvelous job at hiding most of the complexity of Latex,
> but when push comes to show and things go wrong (i.e. the file does
> not compile, your output does not look th way it should, etcetera),
> knowing a bit of the language Lyx uses to produce output becomes
> precious. If, and when, you decide to start using Lyx, I would buy a
> copy of The Latex Companion [1]  and start reading at least the first
> few chapters.

IIRC I bought both The Latex Companion and Guide to LaTeX and
downloaded the Memoir doc class documentation and read it all, because
yeah, if you ever want to create or change a style, you're going to
need a good knowledge of LaTeX.

Stefano makes an excellent point that lack of LaTeX knowledge slows you
down, as it does for me to this day, 11 years after I came to LyX. One
way I like to minimize the slowing is, when I create a new style, do a
minimal job of it so it's recognizable as a different style on both
output and the LyX environment. So I take 5 or 10 minutes to make the
style and then start pounding out content again. Then, every once in a
while, I take a technical day and make the styles look how I want them
to look.

Thanks

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Marcelo Acuña]

> > To start writing a book I suggest to start with LyX's thesis

> > template files. You find them in LyX's installation folder under
> > \Resources\templates\thesis.
> 
> Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
> to use the memoir class. It is probably the most flexible class ever
> produced for LateX and it allows tweaking of most, if not all, aspects
> of a publications. It also has a comprehensive, very well written
> manual (a book, really).  It will require you to learn some LaTeX,
> though.


I am using koma-script book class and I recommended it.
So far I did not need to write my own environment.

Marcelo

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 13.02.2012 15:28, schrieb stefano franchi:


Another option (and one I recently used) for writing books with Lyx is
to use the memoir class.


This is one option, the other one is the KOMA-script book class. This is used for most LyX manuals 
and it is my opinion a bit more flexible. But this is of course a matter of taste.



Let me add one comment to the great response from Steve: I don't think
you can become a fast writer in Lyx (as Steve says) unless you get at
least an idea of how Latex works and thinks.


I don't agree, LyX is designed that you don't need to learn LaTeX and that is why I designed the 
thesis template. You see there that you cann do almost all you need the LyX way. For very special 
things I wrote LyX's EmbeddedObjects manual. So in case you have troubles you should find always a 
quick answer in the LyX manuals. The only thing one needs to learn is to concentrate o writing the 
text and not to look frequently how it will look. The typical beginner's mistake is to try to 
fine-tune everything at the beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final 
formatting can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
(When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's guidelines. In most cases the 
publisher will do the final layout for you, if you like this or not.)


regards Uwe

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Uwe Stöhr  wrote:
> Am 13.02.2012 15:28, schrieb stefano franchi:
> I don't agree, LyX is designed that you don't need to learn LaTeX and that
> is why I designed the thesis template. You see there that you cann do almost
> all you need the LyX way. For very special things I wrote LyX's
> EmbeddedObjects manual. So in case you have troubles you should find always
> a quick answer in the LyX manuals. The only thing one needs to learn is to
> concentrate o writing the text and not to look frequently how it will look.
> The typical beginner's mistake is to try to fine-tune everything at the
> beginning also if not even the first chapter is ready. The final formatting
> can be changed at every time easily for the whole document.
> (When you publish a book you have anyway to fulfill the publisher's
> guidelines. In most cases the publisher will do the final layout for you, if
> you like this or not.)

Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
What happens more and more frequently, though, is that your publisher
will give you a set of guidelines set up for Microsoft Word and will
want a pdf back. At that point getting to know LaTex is inevitable.

I do agree with you, Uwe: concentrate on writing, not on typesetting.
However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
not)---it will make everything simpler later on.

Cheers,

Stefano

>
> regards Uwe



-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012, Steve Litt wrote:


Memoir is cool, but be very careful, because Memoir screws up with certain
other packages, most notably hyperref, for which you'll need the memhfixc
package, and a lot of rain dances to get it to work. Or at least that's
how I remember it. My thought is if you use Memoir, use it every time so
you get to know Memoir like the back of your hand, and you can fix
hyperref problems in minutes instead of days.


  Some years ago I settled on the KOMA-Script classes as my defaults.
Learned how to tweak them to my specifications and stuck with them ever
since.

  Like many applications (and linux/*BSD in general) there are multiple
tools to accomplish any task. It's better to pick one and learn it well than
to switch from one to another. I've done the same with R: I use the lattice
package for plotting while others use the base plot package and still others
prefer ggplot2.

  By the same token, I've adopted the Palatino typeface as the default for
all my LyX documents and PSTricks for all vector plotting. Makes life
simpler and more productive.

Rich

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Uwe Stöhr]

Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:


Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.


I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the humanity-linked 
publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes even require MS Word format but transform 
the word file to TeX to be able to layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.



However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
not)---it will make everything simpler later on.


I still cannot agree to this. If you need a special LaTeX book, then I failed my goal. I invested 
countless hours for the LyX documentation to overcome the need of learning LaTeX. (When I started 
TeXing it frustrated me a lot and the LaTeX books even more.)


What is of course helpful is to look into the documentation of the document class you are using. So 
in case you prefer memoir or KOMA-script, look at its documentation file, but first after you 
finished your first chapter. Then you already have a feeling how writing with LyX works. Document 
class options can be added and removed at any time later.


regards Uwe

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr  wrote:
> Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:
>
>
>> Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
>> typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
>
>
> I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
> humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
> even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
> layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.

Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.


>> However, know your typesetting fate before you start to write and
>> choose the right options (including whther to buy a LaTeX book or
>> not)---it will make everything simpler later on.
>
>
> I still cannot agree to this. If you need a special LaTeX book, then I
> failed my goal. I invested countless hours for the LyX documentation to
> overcome the need of learning LaTeX. (When I started TeXing it frustrated me
> a lot and the LaTeX books even more.)
>
> What is of course helpful is to look into the documentation of the document
> class you are using. So in case you prefer memoir or KOMA-script, look at
> its documentation file, but first after you finished your first chapter.
> Then you already have a feeling how writing with LyX works. Document class
> options can be added and removed at any time later.

This is a matter of preference. Personally, I think the content/format
separation that LateX (and therefore lyx) is built upon is far from
perfect. It is a great "regulative idea" but it doesn't always
work---witness the counteless pieces of advice on this list to use ERT
code (which is often TeX code). I prefer to like to know my destiny
beforehand. Then again, I am a pessimist by nature.


Cheers,

Stefano




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jens Nöckel]

On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:58 PM, stefano franchi wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr  wrote:
>> Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:
>> 
>> 
>>> Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
>>> typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
>> 
>> 
>> I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
>> humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
>> even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
>> layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.
> 
> Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
> publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
> they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
> one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
> presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
> colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
> CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
> scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.
> 
Sorry, Stefano - but LaTeX is undoubtedly the main physics publication vehicle. 

And LyX has gotten orders of magnitude better at decoupling the user experience 
from the LaTeX source in the past decade, so I would agree that you no longer 
need to know LaTeX to use it in a standard way. There are still the occasional 
LaTeX errors, but I can't recall any specific recent example, and that just 
proves that things have improved a lot…

Jens

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:53:27 -0800
Colin Williams  wrote:

> I'm writing a book. I would like to consider the possibility that I
> will do a small print run of 1000-5000 copies. I am certain I'm going
> to publish it as an ebook. I would expect the printed book would be
> in paperback form. I would like the lyx-users to tell me if they
> think its the right tool for the job. I know lyx is nice for making
> mathematics papers,but is it good for making a book which you want to
> reformat for displays and printed pages of varying sizes? Are there
> other programs I should consider?

Hi Colin,

Now that we're all discussing document classes and details, and it
looks like you actually might use LyX, I think it's time for me to
repeat my twice-annual advice.

LITT'S TWICE ANNUAL ADVICE:

In your book's main matter, use styles and nothing but styles. Never
apply an appearance directly, but instead apply appearances through
styles that match the usage in the document (Chapter, section,
subsection, Quote, tip, warning, etc). BUT, in the front matter, feel
free to apply appearances directly, and DO NOT use the document class's
facilities for title, author, etc, and just write them with proper
appearances and spacing.

I've done it both ways, and it's much easier and less frustrating to do
it the way I discussed in the preceding paragraph.

SteveT

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[stefano franchi]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Jens Nöckel  wrote:
>
> On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:58 PM, stefano franchi wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Uwe Stöhr  wrote:
>>> Am 13.02.2012 23:35, schrieb stefano franchi:
>>>
>>>
 Well, that's exactly the issue. IF your publisher does the
 typesetting, THEN you can forget about LaTeX.
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX. Also most of the
>>> humanity-linked publishers are using it in the background. They sometimes
>>> even require MS Word format but transform the word file to TeX to be able to
>>> layout the text properly. So just ask you publisher.
>>
>> Sorry Uwe, but this is not true---at least not in the US. Most
>> publishers in my field (Humanities) do not use latex at all. When
>> they ask for Word is because they use inDesign or Quark Xpress (this
>> one less and less true).  And smaller presses--or not so small
>> presses, like Rodopi---just go for PDF+print-on demand. I hear from
>> colleagues that the  social sciences are the same. Latex dominates in
>> CS and Math only. Even some (and, I hear, more and more) hard
>> scientists (i.e. physicists) now use word.
>>
> Sorry, Stefano - but LaTeX is undoubtedly the main physics publication 
> vehicle.
>


Glad to hear it! The day MS Word goes out of existence I will be a happy camper.


> And LyX has gotten orders of magnitude better at decoupling the user 
> experience from the LaTeX source in the past decade, so I would agree that 
> you no longer need to know LaTeX to use it in a standard way. There are still 
> the occasional LaTeX errors, but I can't recall any specific recent example, 
> and that just proves that things have improved a lot…


Here we disagree. I have been helping another user with a conversion
issue just today---and I would not have gone anywhere without knowing
(a bit of) LaTex. Lyx may well have reach the poitn where 80% or 90%
of what you need to do is Latex-free. Even 95%. Still, it is not 100%
(and, in my opinion, it never will. Latex certainly isn't).
This is not meant to be a criticism of the great job of the Lyx
developers. I think Lyx is a great program that would deserves a much
greater user base than it has. I am certainly glad I use it---and I
don't use it anything else.

I'll shut up now---we are veering dangerously close to pure
philosophy---and that's work ;-)

Cheers,

Stefano




-- 
__
Stefano Franchi
Associate Research Professor
Department of Hispanic Studies            Ph:   +1 (979) 845-2125
Texas A University                          Fax:  +1 (979) 845-6421
College Station, Texas, USA

stef...@tamu.edu
http://stefano.cleinias.org

Re: is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

Uwe Stöhr wrote:
> I don't know any scientific publisher who is not using TeX.

Me, on the contrary, I do not know a single publisher who accepts TeX as an 
input format (this is in the humanities field). Generally, they want camera 
ready PDF for monographs (which then can be of course done with TeX), or MS 
Word documents for journals and proceedings. I have experienced that some of 
these journals and proceedings were in fact produced with TeX in the end, but 
even then they have not accepted TeX file as input from me, simply because the 
editors and reviewers don't know how to deal with that format.

Jürgen

is lyx really appropriate for my book.

[Colin Williams]

I'm writing a book. I would like to consider the possibility that I will do
a small print run of 1000-5000 copies. I am certain I'm going to publish it
as an ebook. I would expect the printed book would be in paperback form. I
would like the lyx-users to tell me if they think its the right tool for
the job. I know lyx is nice for making mathematics papers,but is it good
for making a book which you want to reformat for displays and printed pages
of varying sizes? Are there other programs I should consider?