Hi,
I'll just be a little more specific below as to why I bit at LyX. These
comments and examples might help other SLUGers if they are deciding
between LaTeX and LyX. I just tried LyX again this afternoon given
Andrews comments. I have a version on my PC (ver 1.0.1) and it is much
better than a year ago (I use laTeX directly with gvim). LyX is a very
worthy alternative to straight LaTeX (pure markup) and Word (pure
WYSIWYG) but there are issues to be aware of.
Andrew Reilly wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2000 at 06:38:58AM +1100, Michael Lake wrote:
> > Andrew Reilly wrote:
> > > Another alternative is to build LyX, or possibly KLyX. They don't
> > > produce particularly "nice" looking LaTeX,
> >
> > Its Yuk!
> > And they have added 'extensions' at the start of the files'. latex won't
> > run LyX files.
Andrew Reilly replied:>
> Are you sure? It did the last time I tried, but that was quite
> a few versions ago. LyX 0.10 I think.
There is lots of added information at the top of the files as you will
see in the LyX file afetr my sig at the bottom. Compare that to the
little LaTeX example file.
The following LaTeX code ...
\documentclass[a4]{article}
\begin{document}
\section{Title}
This is a test of a table
\begin{tabular}{ll}
Column 1 &Column 2\\
1.2 &6.8
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
Creates
1. Title
This is a test of a table
Column 1 Column 2
1.2 6.8
Have a look in comparison at the LyX code apended at the end. It does
exactly the same!
OK it is understandable and its ASCII and open unlike M$ Word but you
would not want to edit it by hand.
My point is that 'Once in LyX always in LyX'
I wrote:
> > If you make some nicely laid out LaTeX file and import into LyX it
> > stuffs it up and it does not support all the power of LaTeX.
It lays out tables with lots of newlines. LaTeX writers will layout the
tables manually so that you can understand and edit it. I suppose that
in LyX they don't really expect you to manually edit it. I prob ahve to
get that into my head and accept it.
Mike:
> > It tries to be 1/2 way between Word and laTeX.
Andrew:
> I'd say that it achieves that admirably.
> It "feels" like LaTeX in that paragraphs behave the way they do in
> LaTeX. Item, List, Description etc., environments behave the way
> they do in LaTeX. Cross references, labels, bibtex databases all
> work properly too. And the equation editor is gorgeous.
Yes. Just tried it and its much easier than word, especially if you know
the names of the math symbols you can type them right in (preceded by a
backslash). So LyX does allow you to enter LaTeX math eqns manually.
> If you've learned enough about TeX/LaTeX to know how it thinks,
> how it boxes up the text, and separates things with elastic struts,
> it works really nicely, I think.
Yes. Thats one of the things that users of WP or Word will have to adapt
to. LyX and LaTeX treat all characters, paragraphs, tables, figures as
boxes. Top end desktop publishing packages like Adobe Pagemaker and
Quark also use this concept.
> I've used it to edit/typeset a 160 page reference document, and
> didn't think it was really missing anything. I even coaxed it into
> using the harvard/agsm bibliography style, the same as I used on
> my thesis.
I am using the "ifthenelse" package which (amoung amny other packages)
it does not support. I know this will always be a problem as laTeX is >
20 year old and there are hundreds of packages from chemtex for chemical
typesetting (which does work) to feynman diagrams.
The "ifthenelse" lets me have a boolean value called "mins" initially
set to false
\newboolean{mins}
\setboolean{mins}{false}
When its false all the agenda items for the Royal Society of NSW
Meetings are shown. When true the minutes of that meeting are shown.
Useful as I never have to worry about the item numbers matching up on
the agenda and the minutes as they are the same document.
I'd better end here as its more LaTeX than Linux.
Mike
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Lake
University of Technology, Sydney
Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 02 9514 1724 Fx: 02 9514 1628
URL: http://www.science.uts.edu.au/~mikel
Linux enthusiast, active caver and interested in anything technical.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
#This file was created by <mikel> Sat Mar 25 02:40:09 2000
#LyX 1.0 (C) 1995-1999 Matthias Ettrich and the LyX Team
\lyxformat 2.15
\textclass article
\language default
\inputencoding default
\fontscheme default
\graphics default
\paperfontsize default
\spacing single
\papersize Default
\paperpackage a4
\use_geometry 0
\use_amsmath 0
\paperorientation portrait
\secnumdepth 3
\tocdepth 3
\paragraph_separation indent
\defskip medskip
\quotes_language english
\quotes_times 2
\papercolumns 1
\papersides 1
\paperpagestyle default
\layout Section
Title
\layout Standard
This is a test of a table
\layout Standard
\added_space_top 0.3cm \added_space_bottom 0.3cm \align center \LyXTable
multicol5
2 2 0 0 -1 -1 -1 -1
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
8 0 0 "" ""
8 0 0 "" ""
0 8 1 0 0 0 0 "" ""
0 8 1 0 0 0 0 "" ""
0 8 1 0 0 0 0 "" ""
0 8 1 0 0 0 0 "" ""
Column 1
\newline
Column 2
\newline
1.2
\newline
6.8
\the_end
****end of newfile.lyx
******************************************************
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