Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[G. Milde]

On 21.08.08, Steve Litt wrote:

 I write letters in LyX too. The letter template makes it brutally easy,
 except you need to remember to insert the \date{9/9/2099} via ERT or
 every time you print it the date will change. 
...

Why don't you create your own template then, which reminds you on
including the date.  All you have to do is to change the standard
template and store it in your templates directory. 

(Well, maybe you already did so and just want to warn readers about the
date issue.)

BTW: There is a Date Style in dinbrief, so you do not need ERT, I do
 not know about the standard letter, though.

Günter

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[G. Milde]

On 21.08.08, Steve Litt wrote:

 I write letters in LyX too. The letter template makes it brutally easy,
 except you need to remember to insert the \date{9/9/2099} via ERT or
 every time you print it the date will change. 
...

Why don't you create your own template then, which reminds you on
including the date.  All you have to do is to change the standard
template and store it in your templates directory. 

(Well, maybe you already did so and just want to warn readers about the
date issue.)

BTW: There is a Date Style in dinbrief, so you do not need ERT, I do
 not know about the standard letter, though.

Günter

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[G. Milde]

On 21.08.08, Steve Litt wrote:

> I write letters in LyX too. The letter template makes it brutally easy,
> except you need to remember to insert the \date{9/9/2099} via ERT or
> every time you print it the date will change. 
...

Why don't you create your own template then, which reminds you on
including the date.  All you have to do is to change the standard
template and store it in your "templates" directory. 

(Well, maybe you already did so and just want to warn readers about the
date issue.)

BTW: There is a "Date" Style in dinbrief, so you do not need ERT, I do
 not know about the standard letter, though.

Günter

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Helge Hafting]

killermike wrote:

Steve Litt wrote:
Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 
10,000 words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
  
I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but 
I beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and 
I don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of 
the most important things to me when writing articles.


There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try 
to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm 
getting a bit of extra LyX practice, if nothing else.

I find LyX fine for letters too - with a suitable document class.
This way I get printed folding marks so I know it will fit the envelope 
when I fold it,
and the address is always positioned so it shows through the envelope 
window.


Helge Hafting

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 21 August 2008 10:24, Helge Hafting wrote:
 killermike wrote:
  Steve Litt wrote:
  Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over
  10,000 words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
 
  I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but
  I beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and
  I don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of
  the most important things to me when writing articles.
 
  There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try
  to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm
  getting a bit of extra LyX practice, if nothing else.

 I find LyX fine for letters too - with a suitable document class.
 This way I get printed folding marks so I know it will fit the envelope
 when I fold it,
 and the address is always positioned so it shows through the envelope
 window.

I write letters in LyX too. The letter template makes it brutally easy, except 
you need to remember to insert the \date{9/9/2099} via ERT or every time you 
print it the date will change. Also, I usually change it to a 12 point font. 
You can't automatically assume the recipient has excellent vision.

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Helge Hafting]

killermike wrote:

Steve Litt wrote:
Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 
10,000 words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
  
I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but 
I beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and 
I don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of 
the most important things to me when writing articles.


There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try 
to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm 
getting a bit of extra LyX practice, if nothing else.

I find LyX fine for letters too - with a suitable document class.
This way I get printed folding marks so I know it will fit the envelope 
when I fold it,
and the address is always positioned so it shows through the envelope 
window.


Helge Hafting

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 21 August 2008 10:24, Helge Hafting wrote:
 killermike wrote:
  Steve Litt wrote:
  Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over
  10,000 words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
 
  I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but
  I beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and
  I don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of
  the most important things to me when writing articles.
 
  There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try
  to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm
  getting a bit of extra LyX practice, if nothing else.

 I find LyX fine for letters too - with a suitable document class.
 This way I get printed folding marks so I know it will fit the envelope
 when I fold it,
 and the address is always positioned so it shows through the envelope
 window.

I write letters in LyX too. The letter template makes it brutally easy, except 
you need to remember to insert the \date{9/9/2099} via ERT or every time you 
print it the date will change. Also, I usually change it to a 12 point font. 
You can't automatically assume the recipient has excellent vision.

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Helge Hafting]

killermike wrote:

Steve Litt wrote:
Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 
10,000 words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
  
I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but 
I beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and 
I don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of 
the most important things to me when writing articles.


There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try 
to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm 
getting a bit of extra LyX "practice", if nothing else.

I find LyX fine for letters too - with a suitable document class.
This way I get printed folding marks so I know it will fit the envelope 
when I fold it,
and the address is always positioned so it shows through the envelope 
window.


Helge Hafting

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 21 August 2008 10:24, Helge Hafting wrote:
> killermike wrote:
> > Steve Litt wrote:
> >> Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over
> >> 10,000 words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
> >
> > I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but
> > I beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and
> > I don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of
> > the most important things to me when writing articles.
> >
> > There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try
> > to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm
> > getting a bit of extra LyX "practice", if nothing else.
>
> I find LyX fine for letters too - with a suitable document class.
> This way I get printed folding marks so I know it will fit the envelope
> when I fold it,
> and the address is always positioned so it shows through the envelope
> window.

I write letters in LyX too. The letter template makes it brutally easy, except 
you need to remember to insert the \date{9/9/2099} via ERT or every time you 
print it the date will change. Also, I usually change it to a 12 point font. 
You can't automatically assume the recipient has excellent vision.

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Michael Wojcik]

Dotan Cohen wrote:


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


It's good for whatever works for you.

Steve Litt likes LyX for writing books. As he's noted before on the 
list, he doesn't like it for writing short documents, such as letters. 
When he uses LyX to write a book, he writes the frontmatter in ERT 
(LaTeX). That's one way of using LyX, and it seems to work well for him.


I use LyX for various types of scholarly articles - including some 
genres, like collage, that are fairly unlike the typical article. I 
also use it sometimes for writing short documents such as letters. I 
like LyX for letters because I find it quick and easy and I don't feel 
the need to fine-tune the output; I'm happy to let the LaTeX class I'm 
using do that.


Sometimes when I drive a nail I use a hammer; sometimes I use a 
nailgun; sometimes I use an air-powered palm nailer. I have different 
hammers for different tasks. Sometimes I use a hammer where someone 
else might use a nailgun. You want to use an appropriate tool, but 
that still leaves you with choices, and different users prefer 
different trade-offs.


--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric  Writing, Michigan State University

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Michael Wojcik]

Dotan Cohen wrote:


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


It's good for whatever works for you.

Steve Litt likes LyX for writing books. As he's noted before on the 
list, he doesn't like it for writing short documents, such as letters. 
When he uses LyX to write a book, he writes the frontmatter in ERT 
(LaTeX). That's one way of using LyX, and it seems to work well for him.


I use LyX for various types of scholarly articles - including some 
genres, like collage, that are fairly unlike the typical article. I 
also use it sometimes for writing short documents such as letters. I 
like LyX for letters because I find it quick and easy and I don't feel 
the need to fine-tune the output; I'm happy to let the LaTeX class I'm 
using do that.


Sometimes when I drive a nail I use a hammer; sometimes I use a 
nailgun; sometimes I use an air-powered palm nailer. I have different 
hammers for different tasks. Sometimes I use a hammer where someone 
else might use a nailgun. You want to use an appropriate tool, but 
that still leaves you with choices, and different users prefer 
different trade-offs.


--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric  Writing, Michigan State University

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Michael Wojcik]

Dotan Cohen wrote:


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


It's good for whatever works for you.

Steve Litt likes LyX for writing books. As he's noted before on the 
list, he doesn't like it for writing short documents, such as letters. 
When he uses LyX to write a book, he writes the frontmatter in ERT 
(LaTeX). That's one way of using LyX, and it seems to work well for him.


I use LyX for various types of scholarly articles - including some 
genres, like collage, that are fairly unlike the typical article. I 
also use it sometimes for writing short documents such as letters. I 
like LyX for letters because I find it quick and easy and I don't feel 
the need to fine-tune the output; I'm happy to let the LaTeX class I'm 
using do that.


Sometimes when I drive a nail I use a hammer; sometimes I use a 
nailgun; sometimes I use an air-powered palm nailer. I have different 
hammers for different tasks. Sometimes I use a hammer where someone 
else might use a nailgun. You want to use an appropriate tool, but 
that still leaves you with choices, and different users prefer 
different trade-offs.


--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

rgheck wrote:

Denné Reed wrote:

I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX
/ LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.).


LyX does have change tracking. I've used it. Unfamiliarity is of course
something we can change. ;-)


Right, it does work but is not as easy to use as Word'. But I think 
Denné was more talking about collaboration tools with other word 
processors. This is not really possible I'm afraid.




Concrete suggestions for how we could improve collaboration would be
more than welcome. Post them here for comment, or on lyx-devel, and then
add them to bugzilla once we have some clarity. I know that this is a
big issue for a lot of people, and it's something a lot of us think
about. It's way too late to do anything on this score for 1.6, but for
1.7


Yep, I also have some ideas how to improve it, hopefully for 1.7 :-)



I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
changes are not as good.


I'm puzzled by this remark. Why does that require Acrobat? Is this for
notating PDFs and the like? If so, you might want to look into AREnable:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arenable/. And my understanding is that
there are FOSS pdf viewers on the near horizon that will do this.


Right, Acrobat is a mammoth; On Windows there are also a number of free 
as in beer pdf manipulation tool wich allows annotation and such. I like 
Foxit for example.


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Andre Poenitz]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:17:29PM -0500, Denné Reed wrote:
 [..]
 I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which  
 insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format  
 despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document  
 class available.

Elsevier seems to have a funny way to handle .tex. Even though they
accept .tex and even provide .sty for that, they seem to send the
submissions to India and have them re-typed _manually_ in whatever
system they use for the final typesetting. That's my only explanation
for them being able to remove typos, introduce new ones and messing up
tables ;-} Given that the result looks pretty TeX-ish that's... wierd.

Andre'

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Daniel Lohmann]

On 31.07.2008, at 08:55, Andre Poenitz wrote:


On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:17:29PM -0500, Denné Reed wrote:

[..]
I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
class available.


Elsevier seems to have a funny way to handle .tex. Even though they
accept .tex and even provide .sty for that, they seem to send the
submissions to India and have them re-typed _manually_ in whatever
system they use for the final typesetting. That's my only explanation
for them being able to remove typos, introduce new ones and messing up
tables ;-} Given that the result looks pretty TeX-ish that's...  
wierd.


That explains a lot...

I also had problems with getting them to accept  my paper as LaTeX  
document. Dozens of e-mails where we literary had to explain the woman  
on the other side (with an elsvier.com e-mail address) that our  
document does not open in Word, that a ZIP-Archive has to unpacked  
before doing some with it, that postscript does also not open in word,  
how to produce a postscript file... I could not believe that we were  
actually interacting with a professional publisher. In the end we did  
send her the postscript file, which obviously got re-typed for the  
journal. The result was horrible.



Daniel

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Paul A. Rubin]

Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both 
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX / 
LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.). 
I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to 
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking 
changes are not as good.


I've collaborated once with a coauthor who used SciWord, once (most 
recently) with a coauthor who uses LaTeX and won't adopt LyX (I need to 
work on my powers of persuasion, obviously) and frequently with 
coauthors who are limited to Word (or in once case WordPerfect).  In 
most cases I simply declare that I will be the keeper of the official 
draft.  I send them PDFs, they send changes in whatever they care to 
(just the changes, or maybe a pasted copy of the offending text followed 
by a rewrite), and I put the changes into LyX.  On the most recent 
collaboration, I used LyX's change tracking feature, but not for the 
benefit of my coauthor; the journal required that changes in a revision 
be highlighted with color, and change tracking was the easiest way to do 
that.


As noted elsewhere, if you want collaborators to be able to mark up a 
draft and send it back using PDF, you can either try AREnable (which 
works somewhat spottily in my experience), or get them to install 
something like FoxIt Reader.  Don't count out the option of copying text 
from a Acrobat Reader and pasting it into (pardon my language) Word. 
For Word users, that might be easier than screwing with the editing 
tools in Acrobat.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which 
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format 
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document 
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document 
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of 
Biogeography)


Publishers employ people whose sole mission is to create and enforce 
arcane and often pointless formatting and submission rules.  I find it 
interesting that we can standardize on Internet communication protocols 
and (to within two or three common choices) paper sizes, but every 
journal for some reason needs its own unique bibliographic format.


That said, there are specific LaTeX classes for some journals; LyX is 
distributed with layouts for some, and it's possible to cobble together 
layouts for others.  (There's a somewhat underutilized IMHO page on the 
wiki for sharing custom layouts.)  For other journals that accept 
submissions in TeX (or PDF or Postscript), you don't necessarily need to 
build your own LaTeX class; you may be able to use a standard class and 
graft on the necessary changes with LaTeX code in the preamble of the 
document.  If you do business repeatedly with that journal, you might 
even make a template containing your customizations so that you don't 
have to repeat the process each time.


Unfortunately, there's not much you can do when a journal requires 
submission as a Word document, although in my experience the 
unenlightened journals usually accept PDFs as well.


For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've 
been put off by the price.


That's how I arrived at LyX:  wanted to use LaTeX but didn't want to 
invest the time to be come a TeXpert (and wasn't geeked about writing in 
a plain text editor); looked at SciWord but gagged at the price 
(particularly as I wasn't sure I'd like it); found LyX and got hooked. 
I'm not sure that SciWord solves the collaboration problem, though, 
unless your coauthors use SciWord as well.  Can you load a SciWord doc 
in Word, use Word's collaboration tools, put the marked up doc back into 
SciWord and live through the experience?  I can tell you that 
collaboration between a SciWord users and a LyX or LaTeX user is 
possible but not entirely easy.  SciWord puts custom macros into 
documents, which are a PITA to deal with.


Here's one reason I like to do the official draft in LyX, even if final 
submission will be as a PDF and even if my coauthors use Word or 
WordPerfect:  the output looks more professional.  I can't document 
it, but I suspect that produces a slightly favorable subconscious 
response in the minds of reviewers, and I'll take whatever edge I can 
get in the review process.


/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

rgheck wrote:

Denné Reed wrote:

I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX
/ LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.).


LyX does have change tracking. I've used it. Unfamiliarity is of course
something we can change. ;-)


Right, it does work but is not as easy to use as Word'. But I think 
Denné was more talking about collaboration tools with other word 
processors. This is not really possible I'm afraid.




Concrete suggestions for how we could improve collaboration would be
more than welcome. Post them here for comment, or on lyx-devel, and then
add them to bugzilla once we have some clarity. I know that this is a
big issue for a lot of people, and it's something a lot of us think
about. It's way too late to do anything on this score for 1.6, but for
1.7


Yep, I also have some ideas how to improve it, hopefully for 1.7 :-)



I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
changes are not as good.


I'm puzzled by this remark. Why does that require Acrobat? Is this for
notating PDFs and the like? If so, you might want to look into AREnable:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arenable/. And my understanding is that
there are FOSS pdf viewers on the near horizon that will do this.


Right, Acrobat is a mammoth; On Windows there are also a number of free 
as in beer pdf manipulation tool wich allows annotation and such. I like 
Foxit for example.


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Andre Poenitz]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:17:29PM -0500, Denné Reed wrote:
 [..]
 I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which  
 insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format  
 despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document  
 class available.

Elsevier seems to have a funny way to handle .tex. Even though they
accept .tex and even provide .sty for that, they seem to send the
submissions to India and have them re-typed _manually_ in whatever
system they use for the final typesetting. That's my only explanation
for them being able to remove typos, introduce new ones and messing up
tables ;-} Given that the result looks pretty TeX-ish that's... wierd.

Andre'

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Daniel Lohmann]

On 31.07.2008, at 08:55, Andre Poenitz wrote:


On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:17:29PM -0500, Denné Reed wrote:

[..]
I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
class available.


Elsevier seems to have a funny way to handle .tex. Even though they
accept .tex and even provide .sty for that, they seem to send the
submissions to India and have them re-typed _manually_ in whatever
system they use for the final typesetting. That's my only explanation
for them being able to remove typos, introduce new ones and messing up
tables ;-} Given that the result looks pretty TeX-ish that's...  
wierd.


That explains a lot...

I also had problems with getting them to accept  my paper as LaTeX  
document. Dozens of e-mails where we literary had to explain the woman  
on the other side (with an elsvier.com e-mail address) that our  
document does not open in Word, that a ZIP-Archive has to unpacked  
before doing some with it, that postscript does also not open in word,  
how to produce a postscript file... I could not believe that we were  
actually interacting with a professional publisher. In the end we did  
send her the postscript file, which obviously got re-typed for the  
journal. The result was horrible.



Daniel

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Paul A. Rubin]

Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both 
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX / 
LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.). 
I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to 
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking 
changes are not as good.


I've collaborated once with a coauthor who used SciWord, once (most 
recently) with a coauthor who uses LaTeX and won't adopt LyX (I need to 
work on my powers of persuasion, obviously) and frequently with 
coauthors who are limited to Word (or in once case WordPerfect).  In 
most cases I simply declare that I will be the keeper of the official 
draft.  I send them PDFs, they send changes in whatever they care to 
(just the changes, or maybe a pasted copy of the offending text followed 
by a rewrite), and I put the changes into LyX.  On the most recent 
collaboration, I used LyX's change tracking feature, but not for the 
benefit of my coauthor; the journal required that changes in a revision 
be highlighted with color, and change tracking was the easiest way to do 
that.


As noted elsewhere, if you want collaborators to be able to mark up a 
draft and send it back using PDF, you can either try AREnable (which 
works somewhat spottily in my experience), or get them to install 
something like FoxIt Reader.  Don't count out the option of copying text 
from a Acrobat Reader and pasting it into (pardon my language) Word. 
For Word users, that might be easier than screwing with the editing 
tools in Acrobat.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which 
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format 
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document 
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document 
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of 
Biogeography)


Publishers employ people whose sole mission is to create and enforce 
arcane and often pointless formatting and submission rules.  I find it 
interesting that we can standardize on Internet communication protocols 
and (to within two or three common choices) paper sizes, but every 
journal for some reason needs its own unique bibliographic format.


That said, there are specific LaTeX classes for some journals; LyX is 
distributed with layouts for some, and it's possible to cobble together 
layouts for others.  (There's a somewhat underutilized IMHO page on the 
wiki for sharing custom layouts.)  For other journals that accept 
submissions in TeX (or PDF or Postscript), you don't necessarily need to 
build your own LaTeX class; you may be able to use a standard class and 
graft on the necessary changes with LaTeX code in the preamble of the 
document.  If you do business repeatedly with that journal, you might 
even make a template containing your customizations so that you don't 
have to repeat the process each time.


Unfortunately, there's not much you can do when a journal requires 
submission as a Word document, although in my experience the 
unenlightened journals usually accept PDFs as well.


For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've 
been put off by the price.


That's how I arrived at LyX:  wanted to use LaTeX but didn't want to 
invest the time to be come a TeXpert (and wasn't geeked about writing in 
a plain text editor); looked at SciWord but gagged at the price 
(particularly as I wasn't sure I'd like it); found LyX and got hooked. 
I'm not sure that SciWord solves the collaboration problem, though, 
unless your coauthors use SciWord as well.  Can you load a SciWord doc 
in Word, use Word's collaboration tools, put the marked up doc back into 
SciWord and live through the experience?  I can tell you that 
collaboration between a SciWord users and a LyX or LaTeX user is 
possible but not entirely easy.  SciWord puts custom macros into 
documents, which are a PITA to deal with.


Here's one reason I like to do the official draft in LyX, even if final 
submission will be as a PDF and even if my coauthors use Word or 
WordPerfect:  the output looks more professional.  I can't document 
it, but I suspect that produces a slightly favorable subconscious 
response in the minds of reviewers, and I'll take whatever edge I can 
get in the review process.


/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

rgheck wrote:

Denné Reed wrote:

I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX
/ LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.).


LyX does have change tracking. I've used it. Unfamiliarity is of course
something we can change. ;-)


Right, it does work but is not as easy to use as Word'. But I think 
Denné was more talking about collaboration tools with other word 
processors. This is not really possible I'm afraid.




Concrete suggestions for how we could improve collaboration would be
more than welcome. Post them here for comment, or on lyx-devel, and then
add them to bugzilla once we have some clarity. I know that this is a
big issue for a lot of people, and it's something a lot of us think
about. It's way too late to do anything on this score for 1.6, but for
1.7


Yep, I also have some ideas how to improve it, hopefully for 1.7 :-)



I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
changes are not as good.


I'm puzzled by this remark. Why does that require Acrobat? Is this for
notating PDFs and the like? If so, you might want to look into AREnable:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arenable/. And my understanding is that
there are FOSS pdf viewers on the near horizon that will do this.


Right, Acrobat is a mammoth; On Windows there are also a number of free 
as in beer pdf manipulation tool wich allows annotation and such. I like 
Foxit for example.


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Andre Poenitz]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:17:29PM -0500, Denné Reed wrote:
> [..]
> I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which  
> insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format  
> despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document  
> class available.

Elsevier seems to have a funny way to handle .tex. Even though they
accept .tex and even provide .sty for that, they seem to send the
submissions to India and have them re-typed _manually_ in whatever
system they use for the final typesetting. That's my only explanation
for them being able to remove typos, introduce new ones and messing up
tables ;-} Given that the result looks pretty TeX-ish that's... "wierd".

Andre'

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Daniel Lohmann]

On 31.07.2008, at 08:55, Andre Poenitz wrote:


On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 04:17:29PM -0500, Denné Reed wrote:

[..]
I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
class available.


Elsevier seems to have a funny way to handle .tex. Even though they
accept .tex and even provide .sty for that, they seem to send the
submissions to India and have them re-typed _manually_ in whatever
system they use for the final typesetting. That's my only explanation
for them being able to remove typos, introduce new ones and messing up
tables ;-} Given that the result looks pretty TeX-ish that's...  
"wierd".


That explains a lot...

I also had problems with getting them to accept  my paper as LaTeX  
document. Dozens of e-mails where we literary had to explain the woman  
on the other side (with an elsvier.com e-mail address) that our  
document does not open in Word, that a ZIP-Archive has to unpacked  
before doing some with it, that postscript does also not open in word,  
how to produce a postscript file... I could not believe that we were  
actually interacting with a professional publisher. In the end we did  
send her the postscript file, which obviously got re-typed for the  
journal. The result was horrible.



Daniel

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Paul A. Rubin]

Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both 
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX / 
LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.). 
I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to 
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking 
changes are not as good.


I've collaborated once with a coauthor who used SciWord, once (most 
recently) with a coauthor who uses LaTeX and won't adopt LyX (I need to 
work on my powers of persuasion, obviously) and frequently with 
coauthors who are limited to Word (or in once case WordPerfect).  In 
most cases I simply declare that I will be the keeper of the official 
draft.  I send them PDFs, they send changes in whatever they care to 
(just the changes, or maybe a pasted copy of the offending text followed 
by a rewrite), and I put the changes into LyX.  On the most recent 
collaboration, I used LyX's change tracking feature, but not for the 
benefit of my coauthor; the journal required that changes in a revision 
be highlighted with color, and change tracking was the easiest way to do 
that.


As noted elsewhere, if you want collaborators to be able to mark up a 
draft and send it back using PDF, you can either try AREnable (which 
works somewhat spottily in my experience), or get them to install 
something like FoxIt Reader.  Don't count out the option of copying text 
from a Acrobat Reader and pasting it into (pardon my language) Word. 
For Word users, that might be easier than screwing with the editing 
tools in Acrobat.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which 
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format 
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document 
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document 
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of 
Biogeography)


Publishers employ people whose sole mission is to create and enforce 
arcane and often pointless formatting and submission rules.  I find it 
interesting that we can standardize on Internet communication protocols 
and (to within two or three common choices) paper sizes, but every 
journal for some reason needs its own unique bibliographic format.


That said, there are specific LaTeX classes for some journals; LyX is 
distributed with layouts for some, and it's possible to cobble together 
layouts for others.  (There's a somewhat underutilized IMHO page on the 
wiki for sharing custom layouts.)  For other journals that accept 
submissions in TeX (or PDF or Postscript), you don't necessarily need to 
build your own LaTeX class; you may be able to use a standard class and 
graft on the necessary changes with LaTeX code in the preamble of the 
document.  If you do business repeatedly with that journal, you might 
even make a template containing your customizations so that you don't 
have to repeat the process each time.


Unfortunately, there's not much you can do when a journal requires 
submission as a Word document, although in my experience the 
unenlightened journals usually accept PDFs as well.


For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've 
been put off by the price.


That's how I arrived at LyX:  wanted to use LaTeX but didn't want to 
invest the time to be come a TeXpert (and wasn't geeked about writing in 
a plain text editor); looked at SciWord but gagged at the price 
(particularly as I wasn't sure I'd like it); found LyX and got hooked. 
I'm not sure that SciWord solves the collaboration problem, though, 
unless your coauthors use SciWord as well.  Can you load a SciWord doc 
in Word, use Word's collaboration tools, put the marked up doc back into 
SciWord and live through the experience?  I can tell you that 
collaboration between a SciWord users and a LyX or LaTeX user is 
possible but not entirely easy.  SciWord puts custom macros into 
documents, which are a PITA to deal with.


Here's one reason I like to do the official draft in LyX, even if final 
submission will be as a PDF and even if my coauthors use Word or 
WordPerfect:  the output looks more "professional".  I can't document 
it, but I suspect that produces a slightly favorable subconscious 
response in the minds of reviewers, and I'll take whatever edge I can 
get in the review process.


/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/7/30 killermike [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201


That thread is how I discovered Lyx and why I signed up for the list
yesterday. I will now go back to lurking, and I hope to read less
threads of the 'holy moly' type. It has been a long time since I've
seen that kind of behaviour on a FOSS mailing list.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Jeremy C. Reed]

 That thread is how I discovered Lyx and why I signed up for the list 
 yesterday. I will now go back to lurking, and I hope to read less 
 threads of the 'holy moly' type. It has been a long time since I've seen 
 that kind of behaviour on a FOSS mailing list.

The LyX developers and mailing list community are very polite and helpful. 
I have participated on the lists for over five years. LyX and its 
community have been very useful for me personally and professionally.

For what it is worth, I do some of my projects in LyX, and some in vi 
using LaTeX or DocBook. It mostly depends on what I am working on or 
working with to decide on the tools/technology.

I recently started exploring S5 for slideshow in browser, but it made my 
firefox very sluggish and I couldn't quickly find a tool (other than vi) 
to create and maintain a slideshow. So I quickly used LyX with Beamer to 
do a 50+ slide presentation on DNSSEC. (I will presenting again in Dallas, 
Texas next week -- let me know if you are in Dallas area.)  LyX lets me 
focus on content and less on formatting and presentation.

Thank you again to the LyX developers and community.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

I find this response quite topical considering the discussions from several 
days ago:

Any replacement for LaTeX that intends to do most of the same things is 
pretty much doomed to be markup language, even if you dump XML pixie dust on 
it. XML after all is just a horrible human unreadable markup language 
itself.

I'm NOT trying to imply that XML wouldn't make the LyX developers' job much 
easier or that we shouldn't go to XML. I'm merely putting this forth as a 
different way of describing the POWERUSER problems created by XML (yes, I'm 
looking in to YAML as an intermediate parsing format).

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out 
of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it. 
LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one 
book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over 
multiple books.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/7/30 Steve Litt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

 Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

 LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out
 of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it.
 LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one
 book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over
 multiple books.


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
capability.

I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?
Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

2008/7/30 Steve Litt[EMAIL PROTECTED]:

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:

The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out
of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it.
LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one
book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over
multiple books.



Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


That is Steve's opinion :-)

I use LyX for all my writings: letters, invoices, articles, technical 
documents, now also CV, etc.




I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
capability.

I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?


Yes, this is possible but not really recommended. Although power user 
like Steeve do it. A better alternative to editing .lyx format is the 
ability to insert raw LateX directly from the LyX window.



Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)


I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to 
learn LateX :-)


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


  Nope. I write letters, articles, reports, and presentations using LyX. Of
course, I did use it to write my book (using Springer's monograph class) and
that's where I really learned LaTeX, too. As I needed the information to do
what I or my editor wanted.


I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles and
I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I edit HTML.
In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it does not translate
well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing capability.


  Learn LyX. Back a decade or so ago when I first started, it took me about
a half-hour to work through the tutorial. Then I started writing using this
tool rather than the word processor. As I came across needs not covered in
the tutorial I looked at the two docs under the 'help' menu and, as a last
resort, asked on this mail list. Bit-by-bit my knowledge of LaTeX increased
and I became much more efficient in my writing.

  A friend of mine had been writing in plain TeX (probably still is) when I
raved about LyX to him as soon as I completed the turorial. He had spent two
weeks writing his daughter's resume in plain TeX and asked if I could -- as
a complete newcomer -- reproduce the output using LyX. A day later I sent
him the results with the .lyx file. He was suitably impressed, but still
stuck with plain TeX. (Of course, his OS was Emacs, and he rarely used a GUI
except under employer duress.)


I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a document,
and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?


  Yup. The 'source' is plain text with markup tags.


Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit of
HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend more than
a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take more than a few
good hours


  Which is why you should work through the LyX tutorial right away. It's not
a programming language (although it can be used that way.) There was an
interesting blog to which I was referred by my business partner that
detailed how a Premier Geek wrote code to control a Martian Lander robot
using only TeX. It worked.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |  IntegrityCredibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|Innovation
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Les Denham]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:
 Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

I use LyX for most writing of any kind.  I find it most useful for writing 
technical reports, where I find on average it reduces the total time I spend 
on the writing by about 50%.  My most recent report, which I finished 
yesterday, was about 70 pages, around 70% figures and the remainder text.  
The figures were in PDF, PNG and AGR format.

A quick check of my project directories shows I have PDF files generated from 
LyX ranging in size from 3 kB to 40 MB -- so I obviously use LyX for 
documents of all sizes.

-- 
Les

~~
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
 Dotan Cohen wrote:
  2008/7/30 Steve Litt[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
  The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
  thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
 
  http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201
 
  Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:
 
  LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a
  lot out of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero
  out of it. LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going
  to write one book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the
  payoff has come over multiple books.
 
  Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

 That is Steve's opinion :-)

It *is* more or less my opinion, but Dotan doesn't know that because I didn't 
express that opinion in this thread -- you (Abdel) know it's my opinion from 
other threads.


 I use LyX for all my writings: letters, 

I admit using LyX for over 50% of all my letters -- all my letters to 
senators, congressmen and the president.

 invoices, 

I use plain text for my invoices, and pdfize them with enscript and ps2pdf. 
Plain text is great because it will be readable 100 years from now. Certainly 
TeX and LaTeX have similar advantages.

 articles, 

For an article over 10,000 words, in which I didn't need to do special 
formatting, I'd use LyX too. When I say book, I also mean long document.


 technical   
 documents, 

Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words 
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.

 now also CV, etc. 

I wouldn't use LyX for resumes. Fine-tuned layout is very important in 
resumes, because they need to be 1 page or 2 pages, and aesthetically 
pleasing. A resume is much more like an advertisement than like an article. 
In advertisements, putting this block of text just in this place with that 
font is essential. IMHO the tool to use for resumes is OO Writer or MS Word 
or even Inkscape or Gimp, but not LyX, LaTeX or TeX.


  I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
  and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
  edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
  does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
  capability.
 
  I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
  document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?

 Yes, this is possible but not really recommended. Although power user
 like Steeve do it. A better alternative to editing .lyx format is the
 ability to insert raw LateX directly from the LyX window.

I see inserting raw LaTeX and tweaking native LyX files as two completely 
different techniques optimized for completely different activities. Here are 
some of the things I do by creating or tweaking native LyX:

1) Personalize (watermark) Ebooks
2) VimOutliner to LyX conversion
3) In my courseware's Instructor Notes, correspond courseware slide numbers to 
the Instructor Note sections. Of course, this could probably have been done 
better with a custom environment with its own counter, but 5 years ago I 
didn't know enough LaTeX to do that, so I cheated and used template tokens 
within my LyX file. This brings up the important point that editing native 
LyX can often give you a quick and dirty solution if you don't have time to 
learn the proper LaTeX now, but you need the document now.
4) Troubleshoot LyX compilation or appearance issues.


  Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
  of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
  more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
  more than a few good hours :)

 I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
 learn LateX :-)

Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance just so, how do 
you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?

I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and what 
they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including an 
additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you get the 
look you want without being a LaTeX expert?

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Steve Litt wrote:

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

technical
documents,


Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.


I beg to differ, quite strongly. The moment you write something else 
than text (e.g. math). You just can't beat LyX.
Oh and I also use LyX for taking note when I am at a conference or in a 
meeting. I am so used to LyX typing that my notes look nice and well 
structured from the very beginning, nicer than if I hand-write them :-)



now also CV, etc.


I wouldn't use LyX for resumes. Fine-tuned layout is very important in
resumes, because they need to be 1 page or 2 pages, and aesthetically
pleasing. A resume is much more like an advertisement than like an article.
In advertisements, putting this block of text just in this place with that
font is essential. IMHO the tool to use for resumes is OO Writer or MS Word
or even Inkscape or Gimp, but not LyX, LaTeX or TeX.


Well, for people like me who didn't change his CV layout for years, the 
modern CV class gave a refreshing look to my CV :-)



Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)

I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
learn LateX :-)


Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance just so, how do
you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?


I don't :-) I almost never have strong idea of what appearance should be.



I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and what
they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including an
additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you get the
look you want without being a LaTeX expert?


Not really. OK, I know more or less my way around some packages but the 
real answer is that I am pretty satisfied with LyX official document 
classes. _I_ don't feel the need to tweak them. The bigger tweaking I do 
is adding vertical space, horizontal space or page break, that's all. I 
also do use characters style now (the 1.6 incarnation of it).


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Paul A. Rubin]

FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor 
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's not a 
letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use LyX for 
letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in both the top 
margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX class that would 
accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of WordPerfect around for that 
(and for opening old WP files, of course).


I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in both 
Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point.  Most of the time in LyX 
I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a syllabus, but 
I've moved my CV to LyX as well.


IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations, 
particularly if you're putting in math.


My $0.02 (0.1 euros at current conversion rates).

/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Denné Reed]

I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both  
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with  
LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking  
etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues  
to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking  
changes are not as good.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which  
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format  
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document  
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document  
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of  
Biogeography)


For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've  
been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored  
manuscripts whenever I can.  I also think that the ability to embed R  
code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world  
for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to  
see developed further.


If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to  
hear them.


Many thanks,
Denné

Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Anthropology
1 University Station C3200
Austin TX 78712

phone: (512) 471-7529
fax: (512) 471-6535
web: http://webspace.utexas.edu/dnr266/www


On Jul 30, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Paul A. Rubin wrote:

FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor  
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's  
not a letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use  
LyX for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in  
both the top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX  
class that would accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of  
WordPerfect around for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).


I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in  
both Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point.  Most of the  
time in LyX I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a  
syllabus, but I've moved my CV to LyX as well.


IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations,  
particularly if you're putting in math.


My $0.02 (0.1 euros at current conversion rates).

/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[rgheck]

Paul A. Rubin wrote:
FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor 
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's not 
a letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use LyX 
for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in both the 
top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX class that 
would accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of WordPerfect around 
for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).


It's fairly easy to put together the LaTeX needed to do such stationary. 
I've got a LaTeX package I use for my own letters, and there are so many 
such things around that it's easy to adapt them. Adapting them to LyX is 
of course just a matter of tweaking the relevant layout file.


rh

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[rgheck]

Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both 
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX 
/ LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.).


LyX does have change tracking. I've used it. Unfamiliarity is of course 
something we can change. ;-)


Concrete suggestions for how we could improve collaboration would be 
more than welcome. Post them here for comment, or on lyx-devel, and then 
add them to bugzilla once we have some clarity. I know that this is a 
big issue for a lot of people, and it's something a lot of us think 
about. It's way too late to do anything on this score for 1.6, but for 
1.7


I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to 
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking 
changes are not as good.


I'm puzzled by this remark. Why does that require Acrobat? Is this for 
notating PDFs and the like? If so, you might want to look into AREnable: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arenable/. And my understanding is that 
there are FOSS pdf viewers on the near horizon that will do this.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which 
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format 
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document 
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document 
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of 
Biogeography)



I think we've all had that frustration.

rh

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[killermike]

Steve Litt wrote:
Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words 
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
  
I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but I 
beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and I 
don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of the 
most important things to me when writing articles.


There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try 
to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm getting 
a bit of extra LyX practice, if nothing else.


--
http://www.unmusic.co.uk Michael Reed -- technology, gender, and geek culture 
freelance writer

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 16:42, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
 Steve Litt wrote:
  On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
  technical
  documents,
 
  Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000
  words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.

 I beg to differ, quite strongly. The moment you write something else
 than text (e.g. math). You just can't beat LyX.

You're right. Math is best with a TeX based program.

 Oh and I also use LyX for taking note when I am at a conference or in a
 meeting. I am so used to LyX typing that my notes look nice and well
 structured from the very beginning, nicer than if I hand-write them :-)

As far as I'm concerned, the ONLY product with which to take notes is 
VimOutliner. It's by far the fastest way to get information from your brain 
to file.

[clip]

  I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
  learn LateX :-)
 
  Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance just so, how
  do you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?

 I don't :-) I almost never have strong idea of what appearance should be.

  I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and
  what they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including
  an additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you
  get the look you want without being a LaTeX expert?

 Not really. OK, I know more or less my way around some packages but the
 real answer is that I am pretty satisfied with LyX official document
 classes. _I_ don't feel the need to tweak them. The bigger tweaking I do
 is adding vertical space, horizontal space or page break, that's all. I
 also do use characters style now (the 1.6 incarnation of it).

This is a huge distinction that should be understood by everyone.

If one is happy with the styles bestowed by the combination of a standard 
LaTeX class and LyX, then LyX is nothing short of a totally robust, perfectly 
typesetting, trivial to use wordprocessor. ALL the work has been done by 
Knuth, Lamport, package designers, document class designers, and the LyX 
developers. It's by far the most productive way to write. If one is satisfied 
with the LyX provided styles, the only rational decision is to use LyX.

If one requires significant additional styles, the situation is not so clear. 
There have been times when I had to work a whole day to make a single style. 
This is not because I'm stupid or because LyX is difficult, but because of 
the nature of LaTeX. Also, there are certain layout looks that I'm not 
capable of creating in LyX, no matter how much time I devote. That could NOT 
have been said of WordPerfect 5.1, with which I could make absolutely any 
style appearance.

So with people like me, it boils down to a tradeoff between LyX's robust, easy 
and aesthetically pleasing authoring, and LyX's difficult and time consuming 
style authoring. For me, that tradeoff falls well on the side of LyX being 
productive.

I think everyone should understand that when you hear one person say LyX is 
trivially easy to use, and another saying it's very difficult, the difference 
is usually a difference in their need for specialized styles.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 17:17, Denné Reed wrote:
 I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
 collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with
 LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking
 etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues
 to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
 changes are not as good.

 I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
 insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
 despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
 class available. I've also encountered other journals where document
 classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of
 Biogeography)

 For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've
 been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored
 manuscripts whenever I can.  I also think that the ability to embed R
 code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world
 for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to
 see developed further.

 If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to
 hear them.

 Many thanks,
 Denné

I think if you put together a layout file with ALL the styles your 
collaborators will need, then resistance will crumble. If one needn't make 
his own styles, and yet can still press Ctrl+Y and get a beautifully 
formatted PDF, your collaborators will fall in love.

By the way, that's just how Sams Publishing did it when I was the Main Author 
of Samba Unleashed, using MS Word. Sams gave me a template with all the 
styles, and a 2 page document telling me when to use each style, and it make 
the writing (not the authoring, but the writing) a simple secretarial task. 
It was wonderful.

Just think how much better it would be using LyX.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/7/30 killermike [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201


That thread is how I discovered Lyx and why I signed up for the list
yesterday. I will now go back to lurking, and I hope to read less
threads of the 'holy moly' type. It has been a long time since I've
seen that kind of behaviour on a FOSS mailing list.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Jeremy C. Reed]

 That thread is how I discovered Lyx and why I signed up for the list 
 yesterday. I will now go back to lurking, and I hope to read less 
 threads of the 'holy moly' type. It has been a long time since I've seen 
 that kind of behaviour on a FOSS mailing list.

The LyX developers and mailing list community are very polite and helpful. 
I have participated on the lists for over five years. LyX and its 
community have been very useful for me personally and professionally.

For what it is worth, I do some of my projects in LyX, and some in vi 
using LaTeX or DocBook. It mostly depends on what I am working on or 
working with to decide on the tools/technology.

I recently started exploring S5 for slideshow in browser, but it made my 
firefox very sluggish and I couldn't quickly find a tool (other than vi) 
to create and maintain a slideshow. So I quickly used LyX with Beamer to 
do a 50+ slide presentation on DNSSEC. (I will presenting again in Dallas, 
Texas next week -- let me know if you are in Dallas area.)  LyX lets me 
focus on content and less on formatting and presentation.

Thank you again to the LyX developers and community.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

I find this response quite topical considering the discussions from several 
days ago:

Any replacement for LaTeX that intends to do most of the same things is 
pretty much doomed to be markup language, even if you dump XML pixie dust on 
it. XML after all is just a horrible human unreadable markup language 
itself.

I'm NOT trying to imply that XML wouldn't make the LyX developers' job much 
easier or that we shouldn't go to XML. I'm merely putting this forth as a 
different way of describing the POWERUSER problems created by XML (yes, I'm 
looking in to YAML as an intermediate parsing format).

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out 
of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it. 
LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one 
book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over 
multiple books.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/7/30 Steve Litt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
 The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
 thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

 http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

 Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

 LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out
 of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it.
 LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one
 book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over
 multiple books.


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
capability.

I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?
Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

2008/7/30 Steve Litt[EMAIL PROTECTED]:

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:

The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out
of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it.
LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one
book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over
multiple books.



Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


That is Steve's opinion :-)

I use LyX for all my writings: letters, invoices, articles, technical 
documents, now also CV, etc.




I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
capability.

I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?


Yes, this is possible but not really recommended. Although power user 
like Steeve do it. A better alternative to editing .lyx format is the 
ability to insert raw LateX directly from the LyX window.



Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)


I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to 
learn LateX :-)


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


  Nope. I write letters, articles, reports, and presentations using LyX. Of
course, I did use it to write my book (using Springer's monograph class) and
that's where I really learned LaTeX, too. As I needed the information to do
what I or my editor wanted.


I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles and
I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I edit HTML.
In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it does not translate
well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing capability.


  Learn LyX. Back a decade or so ago when I first started, it took me about
a half-hour to work through the tutorial. Then I started writing using this
tool rather than the word processor. As I came across needs not covered in
the tutorial I looked at the two docs under the 'help' menu and, as a last
resort, asked on this mail list. Bit-by-bit my knowledge of LaTeX increased
and I became much more efficient in my writing.

  A friend of mine had been writing in plain TeX (probably still is) when I
raved about LyX to him as soon as I completed the turorial. He had spent two
weeks writing his daughter's resume in plain TeX and asked if I could -- as
a complete newcomer -- reproduce the output using LyX. A day later I sent
him the results with the .lyx file. He was suitably impressed, but still
stuck with plain TeX. (Of course, his OS was Emacs, and he rarely used a GUI
except under employer duress.)


I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a document,
and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?


  Yup. The 'source' is plain text with markup tags.


Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit of
HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend more than
a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take more than a few
good hours


  Which is why you should work through the LyX tutorial right away. It's not
a programming language (although it can be used that way.) There was an
interesting blog to which I was referred by my business partner that
detailed how a Premier Geek wrote code to control a Martian Lander robot
using only TeX. It worked.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |  IntegrityCredibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|Innovation
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Les Denham]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:
 Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

I use LyX for most writing of any kind.  I find it most useful for writing 
technical reports, where I find on average it reduces the total time I spend 
on the writing by about 50%.  My most recent report, which I finished 
yesterday, was about 70 pages, around 70% figures and the remainder text.  
The figures were in PDF, PNG and AGR format.

A quick check of my project directories shows I have PDF files generated from 
LyX ranging in size from 3 kB to 40 MB -- so I obviously use LyX for 
documents of all sizes.

-- 
Les

~~
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
 Dotan Cohen wrote:
  2008/7/30 Steve Litt[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
  The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
  thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
 
  http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201
 
  Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:
 
  LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a
  lot out of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero
  out of it. LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going
  to write one book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the
  payoff has come over multiple books.
 
  Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

 That is Steve's opinion :-)

It *is* more or less my opinion, but Dotan doesn't know that because I didn't 
express that opinion in this thread -- you (Abdel) know it's my opinion from 
other threads.


 I use LyX for all my writings: letters, 

I admit using LyX for over 50% of all my letters -- all my letters to 
senators, congressmen and the president.

 invoices, 

I use plain text for my invoices, and pdfize them with enscript and ps2pdf. 
Plain text is great because it will be readable 100 years from now. Certainly 
TeX and LaTeX have similar advantages.

 articles, 

For an article over 10,000 words, in which I didn't need to do special 
formatting, I'd use LyX too. When I say book, I also mean long document.


 technical   
 documents, 

Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words 
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.

 now also CV, etc. 

I wouldn't use LyX for resumes. Fine-tuned layout is very important in 
resumes, because they need to be 1 page or 2 pages, and aesthetically 
pleasing. A resume is much more like an advertisement than like an article. 
In advertisements, putting this block of text just in this place with that 
font is essential. IMHO the tool to use for resumes is OO Writer or MS Word 
or even Inkscape or Gimp, but not LyX, LaTeX or TeX.


  I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
  and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
  edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
  does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
  capability.
 
  I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
  document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?

 Yes, this is possible but not really recommended. Although power user
 like Steeve do it. A better alternative to editing .lyx format is the
 ability to insert raw LateX directly from the LyX window.

I see inserting raw LaTeX and tweaking native LyX files as two completely 
different techniques optimized for completely different activities. Here are 
some of the things I do by creating or tweaking native LyX:

1) Personalize (watermark) Ebooks
2) VimOutliner to LyX conversion
3) In my courseware's Instructor Notes, correspond courseware slide numbers to 
the Instructor Note sections. Of course, this could probably have been done 
better with a custom environment with its own counter, but 5 years ago I 
didn't know enough LaTeX to do that, so I cheated and used template tokens 
within my LyX file. This brings up the important point that editing native 
LyX can often give you a quick and dirty solution if you don't have time to 
learn the proper LaTeX now, but you need the document now.
4) Troubleshoot LyX compilation or appearance issues.


  Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
  of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
  more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
  more than a few good hours :)

 I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
 learn LateX :-)

Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance just so, how do 
you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?

I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and what 
they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including an 
additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you get the 
look you want without being a LaTeX expert?

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Steve Litt wrote:

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

technical
documents,


Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.


I beg to differ, quite strongly. The moment you write something else 
than text (e.g. math). You just can't beat LyX.
Oh and I also use LyX for taking note when I am at a conference or in a 
meeting. I am so used to LyX typing that my notes look nice and well 
structured from the very beginning, nicer than if I hand-write them :-)



now also CV, etc.


I wouldn't use LyX for resumes. Fine-tuned layout is very important in
resumes, because they need to be 1 page or 2 pages, and aesthetically
pleasing. A resume is much more like an advertisement than like an article.
In advertisements, putting this block of text just in this place with that
font is essential. IMHO the tool to use for resumes is OO Writer or MS Word
or even Inkscape or Gimp, but not LyX, LaTeX or TeX.


Well, for people like me who didn't change his CV layout for years, the 
modern CV class gave a refreshing look to my CV :-)



Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)

I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
learn LateX :-)


Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance just so, how do
you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?


I don't :-) I almost never have strong idea of what appearance should be.



I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and what
they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including an
additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you get the
look you want without being a LaTeX expert?


Not really. OK, I know more or less my way around some packages but the 
real answer is that I am pretty satisfied with LyX official document 
classes. _I_ don't feel the need to tweak them. The bigger tweaking I do 
is adding vertical space, horizontal space or page break, that's all. I 
also do use characters style now (the 1.6 incarnation of it).


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Paul A. Rubin]

FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor 
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's not a 
letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use LyX for 
letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in both the top 
margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX class that would 
accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of WordPerfect around for that 
(and for opening old WP files, of course).


I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in both 
Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point.  Most of the time in LyX 
I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a syllabus, but 
I've moved my CV to LyX as well.


IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations, 
particularly if you're putting in math.


My $0.02 (0.1 euros at current conversion rates).

/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Denné Reed]

I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both  
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with  
LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking  
etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues  
to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking  
changes are not as good.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which  
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format  
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document  
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document  
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of  
Biogeography)


For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've  
been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored  
manuscripts whenever I can.  I also think that the ability to embed R  
code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world  
for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to  
see developed further.


If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to  
hear them.


Many thanks,
Denné

Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Anthropology
1 University Station C3200
Austin TX 78712

phone: (512) 471-7529
fax: (512) 471-6535
web: http://webspace.utexas.edu/dnr266/www


On Jul 30, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Paul A. Rubin wrote:

FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor  
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's  
not a letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use  
LyX for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in  
both the top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX  
class that would accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of  
WordPerfect around for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).


I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in  
both Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point.  Most of the  
time in LyX I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a  
syllabus, but I've moved my CV to LyX as well.


IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations,  
particularly if you're putting in math.


My $0.02 (0.1 euros at current conversion rates).

/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[rgheck]

Paul A. Rubin wrote:
FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor 
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's not 
a letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use LyX 
for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in both the 
top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX class that 
would accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of WordPerfect around 
for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).


It's fairly easy to put together the LaTeX needed to do such stationary. 
I've got a LaTeX package I use for my own letters, and there are so many 
such things around that it's easy to adapt them. Adapting them to LyX is 
of course just a matter of tweaking the relevant layout file.


rh

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[rgheck]

Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both 
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX 
/ LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.).


LyX does have change tracking. I've used it. Unfamiliarity is of course 
something we can change. ;-)


Concrete suggestions for how we could improve collaboration would be 
more than welcome. Post them here for comment, or on lyx-devel, and then 
add them to bugzilla once we have some clarity. I know that this is a 
big issue for a lot of people, and it's something a lot of us think 
about. It's way too late to do anything on this score for 1.6, but for 
1.7


I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to 
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking 
changes are not as good.


I'm puzzled by this remark. Why does that require Acrobat? Is this for 
notating PDFs and the like? If so, you might want to look into AREnable: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arenable/. And my understanding is that 
there are FOSS pdf viewers on the near horizon that will do this.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which 
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format 
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document 
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document 
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of 
Biogeography)



I think we've all had that frustration.

rh

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[killermike]

Steve Litt wrote:
Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words 
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
  
I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but I 
beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and I 
don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of the 
most important things to me when writing articles.


There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try 
to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm getting 
a bit of extra LyX practice, if nothing else.


--
http://www.unmusic.co.uk Michael Reed -- technology, gender, and geek culture 
freelance writer

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 16:42, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
 Steve Litt wrote:
  On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
  technical
  documents,
 
  Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000
  words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.

 I beg to differ, quite strongly. The moment you write something else
 than text (e.g. math). You just can't beat LyX.

You're right. Math is best with a TeX based program.

 Oh and I also use LyX for taking note when I am at a conference or in a
 meeting. I am so used to LyX typing that my notes look nice and well
 structured from the very beginning, nicer than if I hand-write them :-)

As far as I'm concerned, the ONLY product with which to take notes is 
VimOutliner. It's by far the fastest way to get information from your brain 
to file.

[clip]

  I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
  learn LateX :-)
 
  Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance just so, how
  do you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?

 I don't :-) I almost never have strong idea of what appearance should be.

  I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and
  what they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including
  an additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you
  get the look you want without being a LaTeX expert?

 Not really. OK, I know more or less my way around some packages but the
 real answer is that I am pretty satisfied with LyX official document
 classes. _I_ don't feel the need to tweak them. The bigger tweaking I do
 is adding vertical space, horizontal space or page break, that's all. I
 also do use characters style now (the 1.6 incarnation of it).

This is a huge distinction that should be understood by everyone.

If one is happy with the styles bestowed by the combination of a standard 
LaTeX class and LyX, then LyX is nothing short of a totally robust, perfectly 
typesetting, trivial to use wordprocessor. ALL the work has been done by 
Knuth, Lamport, package designers, document class designers, and the LyX 
developers. It's by far the most productive way to write. If one is satisfied 
with the LyX provided styles, the only rational decision is to use LyX.

If one requires significant additional styles, the situation is not so clear. 
There have been times when I had to work a whole day to make a single style. 
This is not because I'm stupid or because LyX is difficult, but because of 
the nature of LaTeX. Also, there are certain layout looks that I'm not 
capable of creating in LyX, no matter how much time I devote. That could NOT 
have been said of WordPerfect 5.1, with which I could make absolutely any 
style appearance.

So with people like me, it boils down to a tradeoff between LyX's robust, easy 
and aesthetically pleasing authoring, and LyX's difficult and time consuming 
style authoring. For me, that tradeoff falls well on the side of LyX being 
productive.

I think everyone should understand that when you hear one person say LyX is 
trivially easy to use, and another saying it's very difficult, the difference 
is usually a difference in their need for specialized styles.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 17:17, Denné Reed wrote:
 I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
 collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with
 LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking
 etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues
 to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
 changes are not as good.

 I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
 insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
 despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
 class available. I've also encountered other journals where document
 classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of
 Biogeography)

 For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've
 been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored
 manuscripts whenever I can.  I also think that the ability to embed R
 code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world
 for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to
 see developed further.

 If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to
 hear them.

 Many thanks,
 Denné

I think if you put together a layout file with ALL the styles your 
collaborators will need, then resistance will crumble. If one needn't make 
his own styles, and yet can still press Ctrl+Y and get a beautifully 
formatted PDF, your collaborators will fall in love.

By the way, that's just how Sams Publishing did it when I was the Main Author 
of Samba Unleashed, using MS Word. Sams gave me a template with all the 
styles, and a 2 page document telling me when to use each style, and it make 
the writing (not the authoring, but the writing) a simple secretarial task. 
It was wonderful.

Just think how much better it would be using LyX.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/7/30 killermike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
> thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
>
> http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201
>

That thread is how I discovered Lyx and why I signed up for the list
yesterday. I will now go back to lurking, and I hope to read less
threads of the 'holy moly' type. It has been a long time since I've
seen that kind of behaviour on a FOSS mailing list.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Jeremy C. Reed]

> That thread is how I discovered Lyx and why I signed up for the list 
> yesterday. I will now go back to lurking, and I hope to read less 
> threads of the 'holy moly' type. It has been a long time since I've seen 
> that kind of behaviour on a FOSS mailing list.

The LyX developers and mailing list community are very polite and helpful. 
I have participated on the lists for over five years. LyX and its 
community have been very useful for me personally and professionally.

For what it is worth, I do some of my projects in LyX, and some in "vi" 
using LaTeX or DocBook. It mostly depends on what I am working on or 
working with to decide on the tools/technology.

I recently started exploring S5 for slideshow in browser, but it made my 
firefox very sluggish and I couldn't quickly find a tool (other than vi) 
to create and maintain a slideshow. So I quickly used LyX with Beamer to 
do a 50+ slide presentation on DNSSEC. (I will presenting again in Dallas, 
Texas next week -- let me know if you are in Dallas area.)  LyX lets me 
focus on content and less on formatting and presentation.

Thank you again to the LyX developers and community.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
> The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
> thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
>
> http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

I find this response quite topical considering the discussions from several 
days ago:

"Any replacement for LaTeX that intends to do most of the same things is 
pretty much doomed to be markup language, even if you dump XML pixie dust on 
it. XML after all is just a horrible human unreadable markup language 
itself."

I'm NOT trying to imply that XML wouldn't make the LyX developers' job much 
easier or that we shouldn't go to XML. I'm merely putting this forth as a 
different way of describing the POWERUSER problems created by XML (yes, I'm 
looking in to YAML as an intermediate parsing format).

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
> The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
> thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
>
> http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out 
of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it. 
LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one 
book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over 
multiple books.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/7/30 Steve Litt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
>> The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
>> thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
>>
>> http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201
>
> Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:
>
> LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out
> of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it.
> LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one
> book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over
> multiple books.
>

Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
capability.

I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?
Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

2008/7/30 Steve Litt<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:

The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201

Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:

LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a lot out
of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero out of it.
LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going to write one
book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the payoff has come over
multiple books.



Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


That is Steve's opinion :-)

I use LyX for all my writings: letters, invoices, articles, technical 
documents, now also CV, etc.




I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
capability.

I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?


Yes, this is possible but not really recommended. Although power user 
like Steeve do it. A better alternative to editing .lyx format is the 
ability to insert raw LateX directly from the LyX window.



Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)


I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to 
learn LateX :-)


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:


Is LyX only good for writing books, then?


  Nope. I write letters, articles, reports, and presentations using LyX. Of
course, I did use it to write my book (using Springer's monograph class) and
that's where I really learned LaTeX, too. As I needed the information to do
what I or my editor wanted.


I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles and
I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I edit HTML.
In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it does not translate
well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing capability.


  Learn LyX. Back a decade or so ago when I first started, it took me about
a half-hour to work through the tutorial. Then I started writing using this
tool rather than the word processor. As I came across needs not covered in
the tutorial I looked at the two docs under the 'help' menu and, as a last
resort, asked on this mail list. Bit-by-bit my knowledge of LaTeX increased
and I became much more efficient in my writing.

  A friend of mine had been writing in plain TeX (probably still is) when I
raved about LyX to him as soon as I completed the turorial. He had spent two
weeks writing his daughter's resume in plain TeX and asked if I could -- as
a complete newcomer -- reproduce the output using LyX. A day later I sent
him the results with the .lyx file. He was suitably impressed, but still
stuck with plain TeX. (Of course, his OS was Emacs, and he rarely used a GUI
except under employer duress.)


I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a document,
and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?


  Yup. The 'source' is plain text with markup tags.


Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit of
HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend more than
a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take more than a few
good hours


  Which is why you should work through the LyX tutorial right away. It's not
a programming language (although it can be used that way.) There was an
interesting blog to which I was referred by my business partner that
detailed how a Premier Geek wrote code to control a Martian Lander robot
using only TeX. It worked.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |  IntegrityCredibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|Innovation
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Les Denham]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> Is LyX only good for writing books, then?

I use LyX for most writing of any kind.  I find it most useful for writing 
technical reports, where I find on average it reduces the total time I spend 
on the writing by about 50%.  My most recent report, which I finished 
yesterday, was about 70 pages, around 70% figures and the remainder text.  
The figures were in PDF, PNG and AGR format.

A quick check of my project directories shows I have PDF files generated from 
LyX ranging in size from 3 kB to 40 MB -- so I obviously use LyX for 
documents of all sizes.

-- 
Les

~~
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > 2008/7/30 Steve Litt<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >> On Wednesday 30 July 2008 08:21, killermike wrote:
> >>> The original question that starts is poorly conceived but this Slashdot
> >>> thread brings up quite a lot of references to LyX in the comments.
> >>>
> >>> http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/0039201
> >>
> >> Having read most of the responses, they can all be summed up thusly:
> >>
> >> LaTeX (and LyX) is a committment. If you put a lot into it, you get a
> >> lot out of it. If you put very little into it, you get less than zero
> >> out of it. LaTeX (and LyX) isn't for everyone. IMHO if you're only going
> >> to write one book, it's not worth learning LaTeX or LyX. For me, the
> >> payoff has come over multiple books.
> >
> > Is LyX only good for writing books, then?
>
> That is Steve's opinion :-)

It *is* more or less my opinion, but Dotan doesn't know that because I didn't 
express that opinion in this thread -- you (Abdel) know it's my opinion from 
other threads.

>
> I use LyX for all my writings: letters, 

I admit using LyX for over 50% of all my letters -- all my letters to 
senators, congressmen and the president.

> invoices, 

I use plain text for my invoices, and pdfize them with enscript and ps2pdf. 
Plain text is great because it will be readable 100 years from now. Certainly 
TeX and LaTeX have similar advantages.

> articles, 

For an article over 10,000 words, in which I didn't need to do special 
formatting, I'd use LyX too. When I say "book", I also mean "long document".


> technical   
> documents, 

Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words 
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.

> now also CV, etc. 

I wouldn't use LyX for resumes. Fine-tuned layout is very important in 
resumes, because they need to be 1 page or 2 pages, and aesthetically 
pleasing. A resume is much more like an advertisement than like an article. 
In advertisements, putting this block of text just in this place with that 
font is essential. IMHO the tool to use for resumes is OO Writer or MS Word 
or even Inkscape or Gimp, but not LyX, LaTeX or TeX.

>
> > I am currently an OOo Writer user. I am always frustrated with styles
> > and I wish that I could just edit the source of the document like I
> > edit HTML. In fact, I have often considered just using HTML but it
> > does not translate well to PDF, and there is no good equations editing
> > capability.
> >
> > I understood from the /. post that LyX would let me work with a
> > document, and edit the source where I see necessary. Is this not so?
>
> Yes, this is possible but not really recommended. Although power user
> like Steeve do it. A better alternative to editing .lyx format is the
> ability to insert raw LateX directly from the LyX window.

I see inserting raw LaTeX and tweaking native LyX files as two completely 
different techniques optimized for completely different activities. Here are 
some of the things I do by creating or tweaking native LyX:

1) "Personalize" (watermark) Ebooks
2) VimOutliner to LyX conversion
3) In my courseware's Instructor Notes, correspond courseware slide numbers to 
the Instructor Note sections. Of course, this could probably have been done 
better with a custom environment with its own counter, but 5 years ago I 
didn't know enough LaTeX to do that, so I "cheated" and used template tokens 
within my LyX file. This brings up the important point that editing native 
LyX can often give you a quick and dirty solution if you don't have time to 
learn the proper LaTeX now, but you need the document now.
4) Troubleshoot LyX compilation or appearance issues.

>
> > Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
> > of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
> > more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
> > more than a few good hours :)
>
> I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
> learn LateX :-)

Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance "just so", how do 
you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?

I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and what 
they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including an 
additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you get the 
look you want without being a LaTeX expert?

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Abdelrazak Younes]

Steve Litt wrote:

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

technical
documents,


Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.


I beg to differ, quite strongly. The moment you write something else 
than text (e.g. math). You just can't beat LyX.
Oh and I also use LyX for taking note when I am at a conference or in a 
meeting. I am so used to LyX typing that my notes look nice and well 
structured from the very beginning, nicer than if I hand-write them :-)



now also CV, etc.


I wouldn't use LyX for resumes. Fine-tuned layout is very important in
resumes, because they need to be 1 page or 2 pages, and aesthetically
pleasing. A resume is much more like an advertisement than like an article.
In advertisements, putting this block of text just in this place with that
font is essential. IMHO the tool to use for resumes is OO Writer or MS Word
or even Inkscape or Gimp, but not LyX, LaTeX or TeX.


Well, for people like me who didn't change his CV layout for years, the 
modern CV class gave a refreshing look to my CV :-)



Although I have invested in learning a bit of PHP, a bit of C, a bit
of HTML/CSS, etc, I don't have the resources at the moment to spend
more than a few hours learning a new tool. And full LaTeX will take
more than a few good hours :)

I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
learn LateX :-)


Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance "just so", how do
you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?


I don't :-) I almost never have strong idea of what appearance should be.



I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and what
they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including an
additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you get the
look you want without being a LaTeX expert?


Not really. OK, I know more or less my way around some packages but the 
real answer is that I am pretty satisfied with LyX official document 
classes. _I_ don't feel the need to tweak them. The bigger tweaking I do 
is adding vertical space, horizontal space or page break, that's all. I 
also do use characters style now (the 1.6 incarnation of it).


Abdel.

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Paul A. Rubin]

FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor 
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's not a 
letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use LyX for 
letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in both the top 
margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX class that would 
accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of WordPerfect around for that 
(and for opening old WP files, of course).


I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in both 
Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point.  Most of the time in LyX 
I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a syllabus, but 
I've moved my CV to LyX as well.


IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations, 
particularly if you're putting in math.


My $0.02 (0.1 euros at current conversion rates).

/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Denné Reed]

I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both  
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with  
LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking  
etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues  
to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking  
changes are not as good.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which  
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format  
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document  
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document  
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of  
Biogeography)


For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've  
been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored  
manuscripts whenever I can.  I also think that the ability to embed R  
code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world  
for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to  
see developed further.


If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to  
hear them.


Many thanks,
Denné

Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Anthropology
1 University Station C3200
Austin TX 78712

phone: (512) 471-7529
fax: (512) 471-6535
web: http://webspace.utexas.edu/dnr266/www


On Jul 30, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Paul A. Rubin wrote:

FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor  
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's  
not a letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use  
LyX for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in  
both the top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX  
class that would accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of  
WordPerfect around for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).


I haven't tried typing math in Open Office, but the math editors in  
both Word and WP would drive me nuts at this point.  Most of the  
time in LyX I'm doing an article, a presentation or something like a  
syllabus, but I've moved my CV to LyX as well.


IMHO, LyX + Beamer is a tough act to beat for presentations,  
particularly if you're putting in math.


My $0.02 (0.1 euros at current conversion rates).

/Paul

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[rgheck]

Paul A. Rubin wrote:
FWIW, my rule of thumb is that if it's not a job for a text editor 
(NoteTab Light or Notepad++ on Windows, GEdit on Ubuntu), and it's not 
a letter, then it's a job for LyX.  The only reason I don't use LyX 
for letters is that our office stationary has boilerplate in both the 
top margin and the left margin, and I've yet to see a LaTeX class that 
would accommodate both.  So I keep a rusty copy of WordPerfect around 
for that (and for opening old WP files, of course).


It's fairly easy to put together the LaTeX needed to do such stationary. 
I've got a LaTeX package I use for my own letters, and there are so many 
such things around that it's easy to adapt them. Adapting them to LyX is 
of course just a matter of tweaking the relevant layout file.


rh

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[rgheck]

Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both 
collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX 
/ LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.).


LyX does have change tracking. I've used it. Unfamiliarity is of course 
something we can change. ;-)


Concrete suggestions for how we could improve collaboration would be 
more than welcome. Post them here for comment, or on lyx-devel, and then 
add them to bugzilla once we have some clarity. I know that this is a 
big issue for a lot of people, and it's something a lot of us think 
about. It's way too late to do anything on this score for 1.6, but for 
1.7


I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to 
purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking 
changes are not as good.


I'm puzzled by this remark. Why does that require Acrobat? Is this for 
notating PDFs and the like? If so, you might want to look into AREnable: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/arenable/. And my understanding is that 
there are FOSS pdf viewers on the near horizon that will do this.


I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which 
insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format 
despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document 
class available. I've also encountered other journals where document 
classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of 
Biogeography)



I think we've all had that frustration.

rh

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[killermike]

Steve Litt wrote:
Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000 words 
long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
  
I don't want to come off as someone who is purely defensive of LyX but I 
beg to differ with this point. I write all of my articles in LyX and I 
don't see how it would be easier in OO. Basic HTML output is one of the 
most important things to me when writing articles.


There are things that I wouldn't write in LyX, such as a letter. I try 
to do everything in LyX if I can though. I tell myself that I'm getting 
a bit of extra LyX "practice", if nothing else.


--
http://www.unmusic.co.uk Michael Reed -- technology, gender, and geek culture 
freelance writer

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 16:42, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:24, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> >> technical
> >> documents,
> >
> > Again, a great application for LyX assuming the tech doc is over 10,000
> > words long. Shorter docs are easier in quick and dirty OO.
>
> I beg to differ, quite strongly. The moment you write something else
> than text (e.g. math). You just can't beat LyX.

You're right. Math is best with a TeX based program.

> Oh and I also use LyX for taking note when I am at a conference or in a
> meeting. I am so used to LyX typing that my notes look nice and well
> structured from the very beginning, nicer than if I hand-write them :-)

As far as I'm concerned, the ONLY product with which to take notes is 
VimOutliner. It's by far the fastest way to get information from your brain 
to file.

[clip]

> >> I've been a LyX user for more than 10 years and I never took the time to
> >> learn LateX :-)
> >
> > Abdel -- when you need to get an environment's appearance "just so", how
> > do you do it without LaTeX? How do you make new environments?
>
> I don't :-) I almost never have strong idea of what appearance should be.
>
> > I think I know. There are people who know hundreds of LaTeX packages and
> > what they do, so they can accomplish any kind of look just by including
> > an additional package and using it correctly. Abdel -- is that how you
> > get the look you want without being a LaTeX expert?
>
> Not really. OK, I know more or less my way around some packages but the
> real answer is that I am pretty satisfied with LyX official document
> classes. _I_ don't feel the need to tweak them. The bigger tweaking I do
> is adding vertical space, horizontal space or page break, that's all. I
> also do use characters style now (the 1.6 incarnation of it).

This is a huge distinction that should be understood by everyone.

If one is happy with the styles bestowed by the combination of a standard 
LaTeX class and LyX, then LyX is nothing short of a totally robust, perfectly 
typesetting, trivial to use wordprocessor. ALL the work has been done by 
Knuth, Lamport, package designers, document class designers, and the LyX 
developers. It's by far the most productive way to write. If one is satisfied 
with the LyX provided styles, the only rational decision is to use LyX.

If one requires significant additional styles, the situation is not so clear. 
There have been times when I had to work a whole day to make a single style. 
This is not because I'm stupid or because LyX is difficult, but because of 
the nature of LaTeX. Also, there are certain layout looks that I'm not 
capable of creating in LyX, no matter how much time I devote. That could NOT 
have been said of WordPerfect 5.1, with which I could make absolutely any 
style appearance.

So with people like me, it boils down to a tradeoff between LyX's robust, easy 
and aesthetically pleasing authoring, and LyX's difficult and time consuming 
style authoring. For me, that tradeoff falls well on the side of LyX being 
productive.

I think everyone should understand that when you hear one person say LyX is 
trivially easy to use, and another saying it's very difficult, the difference 
is usually a difference in their need for specialized styles.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

Re: Interesting thread on Slashdot

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 17:17, Denné Reed wrote:
> I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both
> collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with
> LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking
> etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues
> to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking
> changes are not as good.
>
> I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which
> insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format
> despite the fact that the publisher  (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document
> class available. I've also encountered other journals where document
> classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of
> Biogeography)
>
> For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've
> been put off by the price. I love LyX and use it for single authored
> manuscripts whenever I can.  I also think that the ability to embed R
> code and data into LyX documents with Sweave opens a whole new world
> for scientific transparency and reproducibility that I would like to
> see developed further.
>
> If the list has suggestions for some of the concerns above I'd love to
> hear them.
>
> Many thanks,
> Denné

I think if you put together a layout file with ALL the styles your 
collaborators will need, then resistance will crumble. If one needn't make 
his own styles, and yet can still press Ctrl+Y and get a beautifully 
formatted PDF, your collaborators will fall in love.

By the way, that's just how Sams Publishing did it when I was the Main Author 
of Samba Unleashed, using MS Word. Sams gave me a template with all the 
styles, and a 2 page document telling me when to use each style, and it make 
the writing (not the authoring, but the writing) a simple secretarial task. 
It was wonderful.

Just think how much better it would be using LyX.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US