Hi Brian,
I use Lyx at my workplace. I may not quote my company (my contract
forbids it), but let's say we write Ada software to control big
hardware.
Brian Proffitt wrote:
> Regarding LyX overall, what are some of the features you think users will
> appreciate the most when they use this application?
>
I and my coworkers use LyX to write our software documentation. We
switched from Interleaf when the company was bought by Quicksilver and
the future became uncertain (even gloomy). So we undertook to migrate to
a safe harbour and chose LyX for the following reasons :
- It is easy to use (easier than TeX and easier than Word to technical
staff).
- You can write new styles and users have to obey the styles (which
makes for cleanly structured documents).
- LyX is meaning-oriented and not Wysiwyg like Interleaf, so that
anybody browsing a document can understand how it is built (e.g.
references and labels) and spot where people forgot to use the right
features (e.g. the guy hardcoded a "see section 3.2.3.2" instead of a
reference to a label set in the correct section. This error was both
common and difficult to spot with Interleaf).
- LyX has pretty good HTML output thanks to Latex2html (this was the
winning argument, Word 97 generates crappy HTML).
- The LyX file format is easy to understand, so we could write Python
scripts to convert Interleaf ASCII files to LyX files. Also this means
that we can leave LyX for another system by writing scripts easily (this
argument was used to convince our management that we could NOT be left
in the dust).
- LyX files are pure text files, so they are easy to manage with a
RCS-based versioning system (such as CVS or our home-brewed SPM system).
We also manage the DIA figures and eps files under the versioning
system.
- The style files are also managed under a versioning system
- The postscript/PDF output is great since it is TeX.
So, you can see that LyX brought many improvements to our work and
allowed us to avoid a migration to Word which would have been a
nightmare (I had to write a 2 page Word document this week and it was
very painful. The styles were a mess and I had to cut and paste data I
could have generated automatically for LyX (with the right formatting
and structure since the file format is simple)).
> What's the biggest thing you want to change for LyX?
>
Version 1.2 will bring a few great features, but the most urgent is a
better handling of read-only files. In 1.1.6 read-only files were
unpleasant in LyX, since it meant that many functions and menus were
disabled.
In LyX 1.2, you can see any important parameter of a LyX file even if
it is read-only.
This feature is very important if you want to manage your LyX files
under CVS : the watches that allow you to prevent conflicts with your
coworkers are base on making files read-only until a "cvs edit xxx.lyx"
command has been issued.
Also, I want revision bars to track changes in the LyX files. Lars
already expressed interest in such a feature, but for now I need to
generate them at the LateX level (ERT would not work since too much
"layout magic" happens when LyX generates LaTeX output so that you can
easily generate invalid LaTeX code).
Last, I'd like LyX to display the style of each paragraph in the left
margin in the way Interleaf 5 used to. This was a great feature that
allowed the user to understand the styling of the whole screen at a
glance. At the moment, you need to point your cursor in every paragraph
to know their style.
sincerely,
P.O. Gaillard
