[Leaplist] I'm thinking of staying with LyX

[Fred Moore]

On Wednesday 10 January 2007 22:04, Steve Litt wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Offlist, I mentioned to Fred Moore that I might switch to OpenOffice due to
> frustrations with LyX environments (LaTeX equivalent of styles).
>
> I've been revisioning one of my old books, originally written in MS Word,
> in OpenOffice. I figured it would really work out well and I'd dump LyX.
>
> Wrong!!!
>
> It might take 3 days to make a paragraph style in LyX, but at least when
> it's done, it's persistent. Make a paragraph style in OpenOffice, and it
> intermittently changes. You have to fine tune (hand format) everything.
> What a PITA!
>
> I spoze I could drop back to MS Word or WordPerfect 5.1, which, IIRC, did
> paragraph and character styles very well, but, no. MS Word uses a
> proprietary native format, and WordPerfect 5.1 is 10 years old.
>
> I've been working with OpenOffice and wishing for LyX. Now more than ever,
> I need to attend Fred's LaTeX presentation.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/
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Steve give me an example of how complex your styles are..  I can't imagine why 
a paragraph sytle should be difficult in a book. It almost never is..  The 
hardest part is running heading and footings if you want them to change when 
chapter heading change.  The one thing I can tell you for sure is that LyX is 
a problem.  You can take standard teX or LateX and most times you can import 
it.. will it look proper in LyX? most times not, simple stuff is ok.   LyX 
intent was to support the predefined styles it knows about.  The other reason 
I shy away from LyX is export.. when it imports it then saves it in a LyX 
formatted file.  You can't compile a LyX file with TeX.  Major bad in my 
oppinion.  Once the whole thing is in LyX you are hosed..   LyX also has 
problems displaying TeX imbeded stuff.  Simple things like \it (switch to 
italic) and \rm (switch to roman) don't always work properly.  At times I 
have found LyX to trash {\li this is italic}.  It also only wants to play 
nice with the standard built in packages.  Understand packages in my oppinion 
is the key as all of the hard work has been done for you.  I attempted to do 
things like double line headers and footers with TeX then I found the 
{fancyhdr} package.. which runs under LateX my problems were solved.. 
In my opponion the answer is to use LateX as it keeps your life simple.  Use a 
LateX IDE this also keeps your life simple.  When you use LateX you are 
allowed to imbed straight TeX formatting stuff.. and dam it works just as 
stated..  if you always want PDF output as your standard run PDFLatex.  
PDFLateX vs LateX is also a consideration on how you store your graphics.  
LateX will only use eps graphics.   If you need other output  eps, html, xml 
etc.. run standard Latex which compiles to DVI, then convert from DVI to what 
ever you want..  Anyway.. My presentation will not be till March. let me know 
what you need before that.. we can get lots done before then.. Fred
-- 
Fred Moore
WD8KNI
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