Wolfgang Engelmann via lyx-users said on Mon, 27 Dec 2021 11:31:55 +0100 >This has shocked me >https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115069 > >Would be interesting to see how LyX performs
My first two books were written in WordPerfect 5.1. The next one was written in MS Word. All the rest were written in LyX. I was happy with all of them. My worst nightmare would be authoring in raw LaTeX. By the time I remembered the necessary LaTeX tag, I would have forgotten the point I was trying to make in my writing. LaTeX is a *lousy* native format for a document. It's suitable only for fixed line PDF/paper. It's extremely difficult to convert to flowing text HTML or ePub, unless you want to (urk) use Pandoc, with all the implied compromises on appearance. In my opinion LaTeX should be only an intermediate component in the authoring stack, that component being for creating fixed-line PDF/paper. Plain TeX would be much better than LaTeX, as a native format, if it could handle fonts well. Does anyone know of a Plain TeX to LuaTeX or XeTeX converter? I'm working on an authoring tool whose native format is a Markdown superset, with complete support of arbitrary styles. It's pretty easy to go from that format to HTML or ePub, but to go from there to fixed-line PDF/paper without using (urk) Pandoc is a challenge. But not nearly as big of a challenge as going from LaTeX to semantic HTML. Getting back to LyX, one of my books, "Key to Everyday Excellence", could not have been written in WordPerfect or MSWord because the (fictional) plot is so date driven that the current plot date appears in the header. And although I used styles-based authoring in WordPerfect and MSWord, I like that LyX enforces styles-based authoring. LyX is quite a fast authoring environment --- the only way it could be faster is to get rid of mouse usage. In my opinion, for a document over 10K words, LyX beats the authoring speed and ease of MSWord. This discussion wouldn't be complete without including LibreOffice. LibreOffice is a style-losing piece of junk fit only for fingerpainting. Those who characterize LibreOffice as a substitute for MSWord either don't use styles-based authoring, or they're fooling themselves, or they know something I don't know. By the way, my new book, "Making Mental Models: Advanced Edition", just came out yesterday. It's made almost exclusively with LyX, Inkscape, and shellscripts. A big thank you goes out to the LyX team who made this possible. SteveT Steve Litt Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques -- lyx-users mailing list lyx-users@lists.lyx.org http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-users
